


love on the fringes of everything (in everything you do, everything you are)

by namedawesome (davethetennant)



Series: love on the fringes, interwoven (so it shall be, and so it shall remain) [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dan takes a little longer to realize that he needs to be a better dad, Eventual Smut, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Kidnapping, Minor Violence, Protective Chloe Decker, Protective Lucifer, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Step-Satan, but they are in love so theres that, character death but he comes back so there's that, everyone thinks they're dating but they're not, like super step-satan, lucifer is very dad in this, really slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 22:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 75,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davethetennant/pseuds/namedawesome
Summary: As Lucifer walked across the room towards the Detective's desk, he noticed that the figure sitting there was definitely not the Detective. The figure was quite a bit smaller, and much more inclined to sticky hands and impulsive hugs. She, however, didn't seem to notice him and was rather subdued. He thought it was strange to see her so unlike her usually happy and (unfortunately for him) clingy self. So much so, in fact, that he found himself making his way over to her and asking (without thinking or really even being conscious of the act), "What's wrong, child?"Beatrice Decker jumped and tried to smile at him when she realized who had approached her. "Hi, Lucifer..." she said instead of answering his question."Yes," he replied absently, trying to think about anything else but the child in front of him (he couldn't). He watched as she looked down at the table; she didn't even try to hug him as she usually did. "Spawn," he called to get her attention. When she looked up at him, he found himself kneeling down to her level. "What's the matter, darling?" he asked, his voice gentle and soft (so unusual when applied anyone who wasn't his Detective).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic... let me tell you about this fic. i've been writing this bad boy since march 2018, okay? this, this is the longest fic ive ever written and i'm posting it all at once. remember, it is a canon divergence, so there are some things that happened in the show but never happen in this fic. Lucifer and Chloe don't kiss until the end of this fic, Candy never happened, Lucifer never finds out that Chloe is a miracle, and Dan forgets how to dad for a hot minute. but please enjoy, and let me know what you think!
> 
> i'm gonna kinda post this as i'm done editing each part, so updates will be pretty quick

As Lucifer walked across the room towards the Detective's desk, he noticed that the figure sitting there was definitely not the Detective. The figure was quite a bit smaller, and much more inclined to sticky hands and impulsive hugs. She, however, didn't seem to notice him and was rather subdued. He thought it was strange to see her so unlike her usually happy and (unfortunately for him) clingy self. So much so, in fact, that he found himself making his way over to her and asking (without thinking or really even being conscious of the act), "What's wrong, child?"

Beatrice Decker jumped and tried to smile at him when she realized who had approached her. "Hi, Lucifer..." she said instead of answering his question. 

"Yes," he replied absently, trying to think about anything else but the child in front of him (he couldn't). He watched as she looked down at the table; she didn't even try to hug him as she usually did. "Spawn," he called to get her attention. When she looked up at him, he found himself kneeling down to her level. "What's the matter, darling?" he asked, his voice gentle and soft (so unusual when applied anyone who wasn't his Detective). 

She sighed heavily and, if it were possible, looked even more put out than before. "Daddy was supposed to take me to the movies tonight but..." and here, her eyes started shining, tears seemingly about to fall. She held them back somehow (a trait, he imagined, she got from her mother) and sniffled softly before continuing. "This is the fourth time in a row he's said he can't go because he has to work! It's not fair! I just wanna spend time with him! It's like he doesn't care about me anymore!" 

Here, she let her tears fall, and inexplicably, he found himself wanting to stop her tears but he's at a loss of how to go about it. Haltingly, he placed a hand on her arm and then found himself with an armful of small human. Slowly, almost as if he was afraid he'd break her (he could, so, so easily), he hugged her close and stood with her in his arms. She was clinging to him and somehow, he knew she needed this, needed him (and how could anyone ever need the Devil? Especially in a way like this?). He rubbed her back with one hand like he'd seen the Detective do with her occasionally and tried to think of something comforting to say. 

"Hush now, child, it's alright," he heard himself saying after a very, very long moment, and, to his surprise, he'd started rocking from side to side like he'd seen mothers do when comforting their children. "Come now, Beatrice, it's alright, darling." Eventually, he heard her small sobs start to taper off and sighed softly in relief. "That's it, my dear, it's alright." She pulled back and sniffled loudly, breath hitching occasionally, and his lips involuntarily quirked upwards before he reached for a tissue from the box on the Detective's desk. He wiped her tears away gently before wiping her nose for her (which gave him pause; since when has he ever been this natural with children?) and said, awkwardly, "Right, then..."

Trixie, who didn’t seem to notice his sudden discomfort, settled her head back down on his shoulder with a shuddering sigh. "Sorry that I cried on you..." she said softly, almost afraid that she'd done something wrong. 

Lucifer sighed in response, and said, "That's quite alright..." He was still swaying in place and rubbing her back soothingly. He looked around the room pensively, trying to decide what to do next when he spotted the Detective staring at him in half wonder and half something else, he couldn't really decipher. He broke eye contact with her quickly and tried to think of how to get the child back to her usual cheerful self and not clinging to him like a sad blanket. 

He watched as the Detective made her way over to them, asking him with her eyes what happened to make her daughter so upset, and he shrugged the shoulder not currently occupied, not really knowing how to explain what happened. She was about to ask him aloud what he'd done (which was a fair assumption, he wasn't usually very good with children) when Trixie pulled away from him slightly and told him, "You're really good at giving hugs, Lucifer."

Blinking he thanked her, but made no move to put her down. She didn't move either, content to be in his arms for a while longer. "Beatrice..." he called to get her attention (he didn't miss how the Detective's eyes widened at the use of the child's name). When her eyes met his he found himself asking, "how about I take you to see that movie, eh?"

Trixie's eyes lit up and he knew that he's probably just made her day, which shouldn't have feel as good as it did (but it did feel good. He made her smile, put her usual disposition back in place). He looked at the Detective and saw the shock on her face. He assumed it’s from the fact he'd offered to make her child happy, he's quite shocked himself. 

"Please, Mommy?!" Trixie begged, and he felt like he was lagging behind for a moment. "I promise I'll be good! Please?" she continued. 

The Detective met his eye and before she said anything, he beat her to it. "I'll behave, Detective," he said. He found himself wanting to go through with making the small human happy. "Whichever movie the little darling wants to see and then dinner. I'll bring her back to yours in time for bed," he reassured her softly. 

She held his gaze for a long moment before she sighed and nodded. Trixie's quiet 'yes!' made her lips turn up at the corners. "Okay, but nothing pg-13 or higher! And she has to eat more than sugar!" she added, making sure he knew the ground rules.

"Of course, Detective," he replied easily. He turned with Trixie still in his arms and started walking away before stopping. "Say 'goodbye' to your mother, darling," he told the child.

As the Detective waved goodbye to the two of them, he sighed heavily, wondering what exactly he'd gotten himself into. 

×××

Lucifer settled in the booth across from the spawn, watching her as she chattered on about her day, the movie, and whatever else came to mind. He was, surprisingly, enjoying himself with the little hellion. She was clever and the movie they had gone to see wasn't absolutely horrible (though he had finished the last of his flask while they were in the theater).

When the movie ended, he decided to take her to his favorite diner. They had the best burgers and when he’d told Beatrice that the owner was an old friend of his, she decided that she had to meet them too. Mike, of course, thought that Beatrice was adorable, and upon finding out who her mother was, asked her if Lucifer was treating the both of them well (the older man winked at the little girl, knowing that Lucifer would take offence, he did, and Trixie giggled). Mike told them to sit anywhere and that it was on the house; he also told Lucifer to come around more often (“And bring this little one again, okay? Maybe bring her mother next time?” Mike laughed. Lucifer huffed and ushered the child to a booth).

So, they sat across from each other in their booth, eyeing each other, one wondering how he was not more than half bored to death and the other wondering if Lucifer would let her order an entire chocolate cake (he wouldn't, but he would let her share a slice with him).

After they had ordered, Trixie started watching him, trying to get him to meet her eye. When he finally did, she smiled at him and asked, “Can we get a whole chocolate cake?”

Lucifer raised a brow at her, “Your mother wouldn't order a whole cake, would she?” At the young girl’s pout, he continued, “But I doubt she'd mind if we had a slice… What do you think?” 

She grinned, “I think she'd be okay with one slice!” He offered her a small smile and they lapsed into a short but comfortable silence, as their food came, and their chocolate cake was ordered. Trixie silently ate her chicken tenders for a while, watching Lucifer eat his burger. He was a much neater eater than her dad, and he didn't put a napkin in the neck of his shirt like her dad. She thought about her dad, how he kept breaking his promises, and how he must not care about her anymore. “Lucifer?” she asked, knowing he would never lie to her. When his attention was on her, she continued, “Do you… do you think my dad doesn't care about me anymore?”

He heaved a sigh in response, and her eyes went to the plate in front of her, scared that he was going to blow her off or tell her she was stupid. Instead, she felt a gentle finger tap her chin, urging her to meet his eye. He sighed again and said, “Beatrice, darling, I don't know. I'm more than sure he does still care about you and I can't claim to know why he's so intent on his work… But, I…” He looked down at the table, and tried again, “My dear Beatrice, if I could change him for you, I would in a heartbeat.”

She smiled sadly at him, but held her tears back, like she'd seen her mother do. “Thanks, Lucifer,” she told him, sniffling.

They were interrupted by the slice cake being placed between them, followed closely by two scoops of vanilla ice cream and two spoons. As Lucifer absently thanked the waitress, he watched Beatrice’s face. She was sad, and it seemed like she hadn't even noticed the chocolate cake.

Lucifer’s frown deepened. “Spawn…” he began, not quite knowing why he was offering this to her, “I hope that this isn't too presumptuous of me… if you ever… if your father ever breaks another promise… Well, you can always call me, Beatrice. I'll never be too busy, and I'll always come when you ask, I give you my word.”

The little girl watched him seriously for a long moment, before she offered a soft smile that reached her eyes and lit up her whole face (she looked so much like her mother for a moment his heart jumped into his throat). After she thanked him, he offered her a spoon, and they smiled at each other as they split their cake and ice cream.

“What does 'presumptuous’ mean?” she asked, giggling as Lucifer sighed in that funny way he had.

×××

Shortly after cake and ice cream, Lucifer carried a very tired Beatrice Decker up to the front door of her grandmother’s house. She wasn't quite asleep yet, but she kept yawning and rubbing her eyes. He knocked lightly on the door before opening it and stepping inside. He met the Detective's eyes as she stood in the kitchen, a mug of something hot in her hand. His lips quirked as she rolled her eyes at his typical habit of entering her house whenever he pleased. 

He placed Trixie on her feet and held her shoulders for a moment to make sure she stayed upright as she swayed tiredly. "Bedtime, darling," he told her as he pushed her gently towards her room. 

To his surprise, she turned back to him and wrapped her arms around his waist and told him, "Thanks for taking me to the movies, Lucifer! I had lots of fun!" She smiled up at him, chin resting on his stomach, and yawned again. 

Lucifer sighed with a 'yes, well' before shooing her towards her room once more. She rubbed her eyes tiredly as she made her way there, and if Lucifer smiled fondly after her, he'd deny it until the end of time. After a moment he looked up to see the Detective staring at him with a look on her face he couldn’t quite understand. "What?" he asked, shifting uncertainly in place. 

"Nothing," she replied and then asked him to stay for a while. “Just let me put Trixie to bed,” she told him and went after her daughter. 

Lucifer sat on the couch, with half an ear on the Detective and her spawn's movements in the other room. Not long after he settled, the Detective returned and sat near him. She obviously wanted to say something, so he let her stare at him for a while, content to be in the same room with her. She sighed, gathering courage, and then said, "You really made her day, you know?" When he just looked at her, she turned to stare at her daughter's door for a long moment. "Dan's been working a lot lately, and she's been feeling a little..." she sighed, not knowing quite what she was trying to say.

"Unwanted, like she's not important, perhaps," Lucifer finished for her. He sighed too. "I don't like absentee fathers, Detective." he said quietly. "I'm not saying that Daniel's doing this on purpose... I'm sure that's not the case, darling." He reassured her when she looked like she was about to get angry at him for even suggesting it. "It never is... But I suppose I know how she feels," he offers her a bitter smile, "at least a little bit..." When he met her gaze again, she was staring at him like she understood him a little better. He shifted, uncomfortable with the attention. With a sigh, he straightened his sleeves, adjusting his cufflinks, he wanted to get up and walk towards the door, but something kept him seated. "Detective..."

"Yeah?" she asked softly, offering him a small smile.

He swallowed past the nervousness he's feeling and said. "Anytime that the spawn... That Beatrice is feeling... Well, if Detective Douche ever breaks a promise like that again... I could always spend time with the little darling if that's alright with you..."

Chloe smiled at him, tears forming in her eyes, and she asked, "You sure? I know kids aren't your thing…”

"Well, she was rather upset at the station today," he sighed, brow furrowed. "It was quite unsettling, actually, so yes, I'm sure."

The Detective smiled at him, a few tears escaped her eyes and Lucifer scooted closer to her on the couch out of concern. When he asked her, what was wrong she shook her head and asked him, "What did she tell you at the station today?"

"She told me that Detective Douche kept breaking his promise," he said. "And she said that it felt like he didn't care about her anymore.” 

She shook her head forcefully and cleared her throat, trying to rid her eyes of the tears that had suddenly built up in her eyes, "She shouldn't feel like that! He's her dad! He's not supposed to make her feel like that!"

"No, he's not, but that's not your fault, Detective," Lucifer sighed, placing a hand on her shoulder before retreating back into his bubble (the bubble didn't always exist, but it was fascinating when it appeared, usually around those he was emotionally close to and when there was an intimate moment). She sighed, nodding and then she asked him how he even ended up hugging Trixie in the first place. “Well, she started crying and I wasn't quite sure what to do... I… I hope I didn't overstep?" he questioned, she shook her head at that, and he watched her closely for a long moment as she clenched her fists and took a deep breath. "Detective?" he asked tentatively, placing his hand back on her shoulder, absently massaging it, his eyes focused completely on hers.

She just sighed, sliding over to him on the couch and into his arms, burrowing her face in his chest, mumbling about how Dan wasn't supposed to make his daughter cry. She breathed him in, as she listened to his voice rumble through his chest. "She's strong like her mother, this is something she can handle. Besides, I already promised her that I'd be there for her whenever she asked," he told her as she wrapped her arms around his waist and settled into him. Haltingly, as he always was with any kind of affection, his arms came around her as if he had no idea what he was doing. 

"Trixie's right," Chloe sighed long after he had settled into the embrace. When he hummed in question, she smiled softly and said, "You do give really great hugs."

×××

His phone rang, and he absently answered it in the middle of an argument with his brother. His tone was a bit too sharp as he answered, because there was a pause on the line afterwards. He glanced at the caller ID and cleared his throat before repeating his greeting more calmly. 

"Lucifer?" Trixie's voice came over the line as a little nervous.

"Yes, darling, I'm here," he said softly. When his brother looked at him in question, he turned away for some semblance of privacy. "What's the matter, love?"

Trixie took a deep breath before she said in a bit of a rush, “It's Taco Tuesday.” There was a moment of silence between them before she continued, less nervous this time. “Daddy was supposed to come over because it's Taco Tuesday but he…” She trailed off, almost as if she thought he didn't care about her like her father seemed not to. 

“Say no more, Beatrice,” Lucifer replied. “I'll be there, just tell me when and where.”

Sounding more like herself, she told him to come to their apartment at five thirty, so they could make tacos and watch a movie. He told her once more that he would be there, and she said goodbye, hanging up before he got the chance to reply.

“Who’s Beatrice, Luci?” Amenadiel asked with a frown. “What was so important about that phone call that you had to interrupt our conversation?!”

“That's none of your business, Brother,” Lucifer sighed. “But returning to our ‘conversation’, as it turns out I’m busy tonight, so you and Mother are going to have to do without me.”

He turned away from his brother as the older angel just kept talking. More complaining, or rather whining, about how he was being irresponsible and going off on a “date” when “... Mother and I need you the most, Luci! That's almost as bad as blatant betrayal!” 

The whole ‘'conversation’ was ridiculous, as if the two of them even wanted him with them. They just wanted to plot against him, so he would let them while he kept a far more important promise. 

×××

At 5:29 that evening, Lucifer knocked lightly on the door to the Detective’s house before just opening it and walking through. He was greeted by an eye roll (the Detective) and an excited, almost ear-splitting yell of his name (Trixie). 

“You came!” Trixie exclaimed as she barreled into his legs. She squeezed him as tight as she could.

Lucifer huffed and swept her up into his arms, and of course, found himself wrapped in another hug (He paused here, unsure of the affection, or perhaps why he'd picked her up in the first place). “Of course, I'm here; I gave you my word, darling,” he told her. She leaned back in his arms, but didn't let go or move to get down, which he took to mean that she didn't want to be put down, so he carried her over to the kitchen. “Hello, Detective,” he greeted warmly.

She smiled at him as she gathered the ingredients for their usual tacos. They started preparing the food, Trixie still in Lucifer’s arms, telling him how to cook the meat for the tacos (“I've been cooking for far longer than you, small human,” he insisted, but let her keep giving him instructions) and simultaneously telling him all about her day. 

Chloe watched them, smiling at how they interacted. Trixie was chattering in his ear and he was listening closely to her. He was replying to her in a very Lucifer kind of way (every time she mentioned something like PE class or the lunchroom he shuddered and at one point he even replied with a “how ghastly!” which made Trixie laugh so hard she couldn't breathe). Despite telling everyone how much he hated children, he was really sweet with her daughter. He had been holding her for twenty minutes without switching arms or complaining (Dan would tell Trix that she was too heavy and big to be carried around anymore) when she told him, “You don't have to carry her around like that; Dan says she's getting too big to be carried.”

“She's as light as a feather, Detective! And she doesn't want to be put down, do you, darling?” he asked the little girl. He made no move to put the girl down, and Trixie (who had deflated a tiny bit at her mother's statement) perked up and grinned at Lucifer shaking her head and lying it on his shoulder. (If Chloe’s heart melted just a little at the scene, well, that was just because her daughter was so cute and had nothing at all to do with how adorable it was when Lucifer squinted suspiciously at Trixie’s head after an awkward moment when he froze for just a second because he had absently placed a kiss to her hair. Nothing at all to do with that, at all. Nope.)

When they finished cooking, Trixie was finally back on her feet (only because Lucifer insisted she carry her own plate), they all got their food and gathered on the couch. Trixie made them sit down and ran to put in the movie she had picked out. She scrambled onto the couch between them and leaned against Lucifer’s side. Chloe watched as he froze at the contact and smiled as he tentatively relaxed. 

“You stole my cuddle buddy,” Chloe teased him, trying not to laugh at the grumpy expression that settled on his features. 

Lucifer narrowed his eyes at her and said lowly, “You can have her back whenever you like, Detective.” But the way his arm had settled around the little girl said otherwise, so Chloe left them to it and focused on the movie. Or she tried to. Half her attention was on the movie and the other half was on Lucifer and Trixie. 

They had finished their tacos and Trixie was now fully seated on Lucifer’s lap, leaning back against his chest. Lucifer had an arm around her and would occasionally ask a question or comment on the movie, cats in general, or if this was really the kind of movie they watched every Tuesday. 

(Once memorably: “Oh for Dad’s sake! That's certainly not how pianos work! I mean really, Beatrice, do you even realize how ridiculous that is?”

“Lucifer, the cats can talk, the intricacies of a piano aren't too high on the list of priorities for kids.”

“Very well then, Detective, I bow to your expertise involving children's films.”)

When the movie was over (Lucifer breathing out a sigh of relief in the form of the word, “Finally!”), Trixie turned in Lucifer’s lap, so she was sitting across his legs and looked up at the man. “Lucifer?” she asked, voice curious.

“Beatrice,” he replied in much the same way. (Chloe didn't smile at that, she really didn't.)

“How do pianos work?” she asked.

Lucifer lit up and began explaining the keys and the hammers and the strings and how they were all connected and made each other work. He also explained about the pedals and what they did when they were used. During his explanation, Trixie rested her head against his chest, closed her eyes, and yawned softly, seemingly listening to his voice rumble through his chest. He was so busy explaining that he never noticed that she was touching him more than she had been.

Chloe smiled at the two of them, before frowning in thought. She was upset that Dan wasn't with them, he had promised after all, but her daughter was more than content with Lucifer (although she had pouted moodily for a while before tentatively asking if she could call Lucifer to come over and have tacos with them). She heard her daughter asking about different instruments, and get more long, rambling responses from the man. Chloe knew that Dan would've brushed off their daughter eventually (about three questions in with a question of his own designed to change the subject), the difference with Lucifer was astounding. He let her daughter ask as many questions as she wanted, answered every single one he could and promised her answers for the ones he couldn't (which only happened once, and was because he wasn't entirely positive about the technical differences between a didgeridoo and an oboe).

She watched him with her daughter for a long moment, amazed at how natural he was with her (as long as he didn't think too hard about it as he was wont to do). She had never seen Trixie warm up to anyone quite like she had Lucifer, which was amusing. She knew that since she and Dan had split her daughter needed a more solid male presence in her life. She just hadn't expected Trixie to pick Lucifer.

It seemed that he hadn't expected to be picked either. She watched the two of them as they started discussing what instruments would sound like if they had been played by actual cats. A discussion started by Lucifer to see if he could convince the child that cats don't actually behave like they had in the movie (Trixie already knew that cats couldn't play instruments, she just thought Lucifer was funny when he got frustrated).

Chloe rolled her eyes and sighed. “Okay, Monkey, tell Lucifer ‘goodnight’ and get ready for bed,” she interrupted, before things could escalate.

Trixie shifted to wrap her arms around Lucifer’s neck, holding him tightly. “'Night, Lucifer! Thanks for coming over, I had a lot of fun!”

Lucifer froze, looked at Chloe for help, and sighed when he realized he wasn't about to get any. “Yes, well, goodnight, love,” he replied softly as he detached her from his person. “Now do as your mother says.” He nudged her towards her room. 

Chloe was staring at him when he turned back to her. He looked sheepish, like he’d been caught doing something bad instead of watching a Disney movie and cuddling. Her mouth quirked up at the corners and she stood, walking him to the door. “Thanks for coming over tonight, Lucifer, it really meant a lot to her,” Chloe said before he could step out the door. 

“I made her a promise, Detective, and I'm a man of my word,” he said simply. 

Chloe smiled at him, softer than earlier, and said, “I know. It's more than that to her though. She’s had a lot of broken promises lately, so thank you, Lucifer, really.” And she leaned up (he was so, so tall and she had to stand on her toes to reach because she wasn't wearing shoes), placing a soft kiss on his cheek before ushering him out the door, a quiet, tender ‘goodnight’ following him as he passed. 

He stood outside the house for a while, trying not to reach up and touch his cheek. He made himself walk down to his car, and drive home, the entire time, his mind on the Detective and her spawn and what they made him feel.

×××

As Lucifer made his way through the station, he absently pulled out his flask and took a drink. When he walked up to the Detective's desk, she was standing a bit further from him arguing with Detective Douche. He was about to step in when he heard her say, “She’s your daughter, Dan! If she wants you to come to the park with us, you're supposed to go to the park with us!”

Douche threw his hands up in the air and scoffed, “Chloe, I'm really busy right now! I wish I had the time, but I don't! I'll hang out with her next week, okay?”

Lucifer saw the moment she closed off. “Whatever, Dan,” she said turning away from her ex-husband, who stood there as if he were just realizing that he'd made a mistake. When she saw him, she made her way over and apologized softly. 

“Sounds like Detective Douche is the one who needs to apologize,” he told her, brushing hers aside with a wave of his hand. When she gave him a tight smile, his brow furrowed. “Detective?” he asked tentatively. Her eyes met his and waited for him to speak. “Would it be alright if I joined you and Beatrice at the park?”

The Detective gaped at him for half a moment, gentle surprise coloring her face, and then she smiled softly (at him, the devil, like he was something special and she… she took his breath sometimes). “Yeah, Lucifer, that’d be great! Trixie will be so excited!” she was still smiling at him, gentle like that night not so long ago when she kissed him on the cheek. She told him that she was just finishing up some paperwork, and then they could pick Trixie up from school and head to the park. “I’m working a half day, so I can spend time with her. She wants her dad but…” she told him as they settled at her desk. 

She pulled out some forms, and he raised a brow at her as she teasingly waved them at him. He pulled out his flask and took a sip, smirking as she rolled her eyes at him. He spent their time together helping her fill some details in her reports, verbally of course, he wasn't one for paperwork. 

Eventually she stood and stretched, he watched her lazily, reluctant to stand with her and break the moment. She ushered him up, hand caressing his shoulders as she passed, that more than anything made him stand, following after her like his heart was tethered to her. 

They took her car, him lounging in the front seat, telling her about something he overheard in the breakroom earlier, some kind of ridiculous drama that some of the other officers had time to get involved in. She laughed at his take on the whole thing, glad that she was in no way involved. She watched Lucifer out of the corner of her eye, he was gesticulating mildly, and she smiled at the behavior. It was just so Lucifer.

She pulled up to the school and parked. She motioned for him to get out and then she leaned against the side of the car next to him. They were quiet for a while, but she knew he wouldn't be quiet for long. 

“Will Beatrice be upset that I'm not Daniel?” he asked, suddenly insecure. 

Chloe sighed. “I don't know, really. I mean, she asked me to ask him, but we’ll have to see. She really misses him…”

“I can put the fear of the Devil in him for you, darling,” he offered. 

She laughed softly at him but when she realized he was serious she said, “No, no that's okay.”

He sighed deeply, as if he were disappointed. “If you insist, Detective…” he said, like he'd rather not. 

He perked up and then shifted nervously when the school bell rang (which didn't make Chloe smile at him fondly, not even a small one). It turned out he didn't need to be nervous, because, as always, Trixie saw him and broke into a huge grin and a dead sprint. She yelled his name at the top of her lungs, making Lucifer smirk at the looks they were given. She was scooped up into his arms before she could collide with his legs. 

“Are you going to the park with us?!” she asked, arms around his neck, squeezing him tight. At his nod she squeezed him tighter and giggled. After a moment, she pulled back and asked with a deep frown, “Daddy said he was too busy, didn't he?”

“Oh, Monkey,” Chloe sighed heavily. “I'm so sorry, baby…” She stepped closer to the two of them and put a soothing hand on her daughter's back.

Trixie sniffled but didn't cry. Lucifer watched the little girl and saw how helpless her mother felt, so he tapped her chin softly to get her attention and told her, voice quiet and gentle (the voice usually reserved for the Detective and only in private moments), “Dry those eyes, little love. You've got the Devil on your side.”

Trixie stared into his eyes for a few seconds, and then smiled, tears banished for now. She wrapped her arms around his neck once more before hopping down to hug her mother. 

As they drove to the park, Trixie told them about her day. She was a little more subdued than usual, which worried the Detective, but she knew that would soon pass. 

Trixie shot off like a rocket when they got to the playground. Chloe smiled after her daughter and led Lucifer to a bench. When he sat, he stretched an arm out along the back of it, behind her. She tried not to settle against him, but as she watched her daughter climb around on the equipment with her friends, she found herself leaning into him. She felt comfortable around him, more so than she ever had with Dan, or anyone else for that matter, which she should've found strange. 

“It bothers you, that he finds it so easy to blow her off like he does, doesn't it?” he asked, drawing her attention away from her thoughts. 

She sighed and leaned even more into his side. “Yeah,” she shrugged a shoulder helplessly, “it’s like he thinks she's gonna put growing up on hold for him. I just don't want her to grow up thinking her dad doesn't want her…”

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer to him. “Even if she does, she still has me, Detective,” he said softly. She smiled and placed a hand on his knee on silent thanks.

They sat in silence for a while longer, watching the young Decker play and make friends easily. Chloe sighed and looked up at him, wanting to tell him something, not knowing if she should. “You're really good with her, you know… when you don't think too hard about it, you're really great with her,” she told him softly. When he just blinked at her, she smiled and said, “Just don't think too hard when you're spending time with her, and you'll do okay.”

He nodded shortly to her but didn't meet her eyes for a while afterwards.

×××

“...And then, when Ms. Williams told the class to be quiet, so she could hear the announcement, Tommy’s desk got knocked over by Anthony Crawford. So, he got in trouble again, even though it was Bobby that pushed him,” Trixie told Lucifer and Chloe as they sat in the diner booth (not _Mike’s_ which disappointed Trixie just a little, and Lucifer promised to bring both her and her mother to _Mike’s_ the next time they were all out together. Mike had told him that since he met Trixie, he needed to meet the girl's mother).

“This Bobby character sounds absolutely dreadful,” Lucifer replied. He took a sip of his coffee and watched as Trixie nodded. “He does this every day?”

“He picks on somebody different each day,” Trixie told him. She traced an invisible pattern on the table top.

Chloe watched as Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “Has he ever picked on you?” he asked casually. Or at least he was trying to be casual about it, but really, he was quite obvious (and Chloe was not at all affected by his concern for her daughter, nope, not even a little). Trixie made a face but didn't say anything. Lucifer sighed but didn't let it go. “Beatrice,” he said, getting her to look at him, “if he does it again, you'll tell us, yeah?” (And Chloe definitely melted at that. Right into a giant puddle of goo. Because this man, who could barely identify his own emotions, was concerned about her daughter being bullied, and yeah, she was definitely affected.)

Trixie nodded shyly in response and then told them about her science class. She was in the middle of explaining an experiment the teacher showed them, when the waitress stopped by with their food. 

“You have a beautiful family,” the waitress, Bobbi, told Lucifer as she finished her task. “Your daughter's gorgeous! She looks just like the two of you.”

Before Lucifer could reply, she walked off to serve another table. He sat there, silently reeling at the fact that a stranger thought he had a family. And he realized that from the outside, that's exactly what they looked like. 

He tuned back into Beatrice telling them about how her teacher had made a strange substance out of cornstarch and water and the physics defying properties it held. He tried not to smile at how animated she was, but when he met the Detective's eyes, he knew he'd failed.

×××

Trixie was sitting at her father's desk bored out of her mind. Her dad had promised that he would take her to dinner, but that had been more than half an hour ago. She gave up any hope of food or spending time with her dad, and sighed deeply, hoping he would come back soon so she could at least get a snack.

As she was watching the doors her mom and Lucifer walked in and her day immediately brightened. “Lucifer! Mommy!” she exclaimed as they came within earshot.

“Hey, Monkey!” her mom said as she picked her up and placed a smacking kiss on her cheek. “I thought daddy was taking you to dinner,” Chloe said, brow furrowing.

Before Trixie could respond, she was plucked from her mother's arms. “Detective, she may be your daughter, but you really must learn to share her,” he told her cheekily. 

“Lucifer!” Trixie giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck as he held her close, kissing her forehead. He froze afterwards, as he usually did, but shook himself back to the present. “You're silly.”

As Lucifer stuck his tongue out at her, Chloe asked again, “Trix, babe, where's Daddy? Have you eaten already?”

Still hugging Lucifer, she shrugged and replied, “Nope, Daddy went that way,” she pointed towards the interrogation rooms, “and he's been gone a really, really long time! And I'm really, really hungry!”

Chloe huffed, frowning and looked like she was about to march over there and search for Dan and force him to spend time with his daughter. Lucifer quickly caught her wrist gently and suggested, “We could take her out to eat. We've got nothing left we can do today, darling.”

Chloe smiled at him (in that way she had now, whenever he was with both her and her daughter or when he'd said something sweet, especially if it was on accident), and after a long moment she nodded. “Let me text Dan,” she said, trying not to laugh at her daughter's cheer of triumph.

“I've got the perfect place,” Lucifer said with a smirk. 

After she texted Dan, they all piled into Chloe's car (Lucifer insisted on driving, that their destination was a surprise, and Trixie was bouncing non-stop in the backseat). When they pulled to a stop outside a diner Trixie squealed in excitement.

As she tried to scramble out of the backseat of the car, Lucifer reached back and snagged her by her belt loop. “Beatrice, you hellion, what are the rules for the car?” he asked, tone sharp but not enough to really upset the child, pulling her back and raising a brow.

Trixie sighed and settled down as much as she could (she couldn't stop bouncing). “Wait for you or mommy to get out before I do and nothing sharp near the seats and always buckle up!” she said.

Chloe raised her brows at the two of them, impressed that her rules were being implemented by him, even if they weren't in the right order. She watched Lucifer as he gave her daughter a pointed look and smiled as her daughter groaned. They piled out of the car and made their way inside.

She wasn't expecting the small diner called _Mike’s_ when she looked up. She trailed behind the two of them, smiling at Lucifer as he held the door open for the both of them.

“Lucifer!” Mike greeted. “You brought the kid again! And her mother this time! Fantastic!” he laughed, clapping Lucifer on the shoulder. He stuck his hand out to her and shook hers enthusiastically. “The name's Mike!”

“Chloe,” she replied. “Nice to meet you.” She looked at Lucifer for an explanation, but he wouldn't meet her eyes.

“Lucifer talks about you all the time!” Mike laughed. Lucifer glared at the man, but it lacked any real heat. “What? You do! It's always ‘Detective’ this and ‘Detective’ that!”

“Yes, thank you, Mike,” Lucifer huffed, causing Mike to laugh. 

“Okay, man, I know when I've embarrassed you,” he said with a wink in Chloe’s direction. “Sit anywhere, and it's on the house, Lucifer! I mean it this time!”

“It's customary to leave a tip,” Lucifer said, low enough for Chloe to hear, but not Mike.

They sat and, of course, Trixie’s first question was if they could get chocolate cake (“It's the best in the whole world, Mommy! Please, please, please?!”) which was promised if she ate all of her dinner. 

Lucifer ordered for them, deciding that they all needed milkshakes. Chocolate for himself and Trixie and strawberry for the Detective. He watched as they talked and joked, laughing with them, content to just watch them be together.

As they waited for their food, Trixie entertained them with stories from school and “silly” police officers she'd talked to at the precinct. When their food arrived, Trixie dug right in, hungry because she'd had to wait for so long. 

Chloe laughed at her daughters ravenous behavior and chanced a look in Lucifer's direction. He was methodically chewing on his food as he watched her daughter with a degree of morbid fascination. She kicked at his leg and his attention jumped to her immediately. “Thanks for this,” she gestured to the diner with a small smile.

Lucifer looked down at the table before glancing at her through his lashes, “The Spawn was hungry, and it was past dinner time, Detective.”

Chloe placed a hand on his forearm, and he froze, not quite meeting her eye. “Thank you, Lucifer,” she told him softly. 

(When they left, Lucifer placed two hundred dollars on the table. They pulled out of the parking lot with Mike standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and Lucifer smirking. Trixie giggled as her mother rolled her eyes.)

Dan called shortly after they'd gotten in the car asking if he could join them, but Chloe told him they’d just finished. Her brow furrowed when he didn't seem very bothered by that fact. She asked if he was taking Trixie for the night, as he’d promised he would, but he told her something about a surprise stakeout that absolutely had to happen that night. That made her angry. “Dan! You promised her!” she told him sharply.

“Come on, Chlo’! It’s not like you've never done it to me!” was his response, frustrated and loud.

She took a deep breath, and without yelling she said, “She lives with me, Dan. She doesn't get to see you very often. She misses you.”

“I miss her too! But I have to work!” he said, still angry but quieter.

Chloe glanced up at Lucifer, saw his jaw clenched tight, like he'd heard Dan over the phone, and sighed softly, “Okay, Dan. Bye.” She hung up and sighed deeply, eyes closed. She almost jumped when Lucifer placed his hand on her knee. He stroked it with his thumb, letting her take comfort from him as she needed.

“I'm not going to Daddy’s house, am I?” Trixie asked from the backseat making the both of them jump.

Chloe turned back to her daughter and sighed. “I'm sorry, Monkey,” she said.

“It's okay, Mommy…” she replied with a sad shrug. She was quiet for a long moment looking from her mom to Lucifer. She wrung her hands together, and then took a deep breath as if she were bracing herself for something. “Lucifer?” she asked softly.

“Yes, darling?” Lucifer replied. 

“Will you… will you come to our house and read me a bedtime story?” she asked. 

She sounded like she expected him to say no, like her father had (and that didn't almost break his heart. It really didn't… But it did just a little, he decided). His jaw clenched for a short moment, and he forced it to relax, not wanting to sound angry at her, never at her, and told her gently, like she was precious to him (and she was, she just didn't know how much), “Of course I will, dearest heart.”

She grinned at him through the rearview mirror and giggled when he winked at her. The child kept up a steady chatter, easing the tension in the car just a tad. Beside him, Chloe was biting her lip and trying to keep her breathing steady. Lucifer surreptitiously offered her his hand and didn't say a word when she grabbed it. She didn't let go until he stopped the car at the precinct. He offered to go in and “grab the little urchin’s things” but Chloe insisted. She returned, red-faced and with tears of frustration and anger in her eyes. Lucifer knew better than to mention it. Instead he drove off as soon as she closed the door, offering her his hand once more (she took it and squeezed so hard he thought she'd break his fingers, but she took a deep, ragged breath and loosened her grip. He sighed, bringing her hand to his lips and placing a gentle kiss to her knuckles. She let out a breathy sob, and he let their clasped hands fall to the console between them. He caressed her fingers with his thumb, offering her what comfort he could as he drove.)

When they arrived at the Detective’s apartment (new and with her new roommate, which she wasn't sure if she regretted yet), he took charge, somehow sensing that Chloe just couldn't handle much at the moment, that she needed a break, just for tonight. “Get ready for bed, Beatrice,” he told her. “Let me know when you're ready for your story.” As she scurried off, he led the Detective to her couch. “Wine or whiskey, darling?” he asked her quietly, knowing she didn't want her daughter to hear him. 

She sighed heavily and rubbed at her temples for a long quiet moment. “Wine, please,” she told him softly. Soon, she had a glass in front of her and Lucifer’s hand resting between her shoulder blades (and usually she would be fine, she really would, but today had been hard, and the crime scene had been especially gruesome, their victim young and looked so much like her daughter would when she got older that she'd had to take a moment before asking Ella for the details).

“Lucifer?” Trixie called, like she wasn't sure he was still there. 

Chloe shuddered with a silent sob, just once, and Lucifer squeezed her shoulder as he replied, “One moment, darling.” He squeezed her shoulder once more (when she thanked him through a sob, he told her, “We're partners, love, even in this.”) unsure of what else he could do and went to the child's room.

She was seated in her bed waiting for him, and she grinned when she saw him. “It's the first _Harry Potter_ ,” she told him. “Me and Mommy are on chapter eleven.”

He sat and turned to the correct page, raised a brow at her when she snuggled into bed excitedly, and started to read, “ _As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaver skin boots_.” 

She was asleep by the middle of chapter twelve. He turned off the overhead light as he left the room and watched the Detective for a moment as she sipped at her wine, back straight and shoulders heavy.

She offered him a pathetic attempt at a smile as he sat next to her. As she stared at him, her eyes slowly filled with tears and he hesitantly, unsurely pulled her into his arms. She sobbed into his chest, he didn't try to hush her, just rubbed her back until she stopped (her breaths uneven and shaky like her daughter's when she was upset). He kept holding her only letting go when she pulled away.

“Thanks,” she sniffled quietly. She shook her head like she couldn't believe herself, “I don't know why this is bothering me like this…”

“It must be frustrating,” he told her, in a rare moment of complete understanding. “He keeps breaking her trust, she…” he huffed out a humorless, sad laugh, and continued, “she feels like she's the one who's doing something wrong.”

Chloe's eyes filled with tears once more, but she didn't let them spillover. Shaking her head, she scoffs, “I just want to stop her from getting hurt like this forever. She's my baby, Lucifer, and I can't stop her from hurting…” She sobbed once more, quietly so she wouldn't wake her daughter.

Lucifer put his arm around her and pulled her close, placing a kiss to her temple, then her forehead as she burrowed into his arms. “You are truly good, Chloe,” he told her, “and if there were a way to stop her from feeling this way, I would help her. This isn't your fault, darling, and it never will be. She has you, and you've never let her down before.”

“I will if she ever sees me like this,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “You can't let her see me like this.”

Lucifer caressed her hair, kissing her forehead once more, “She won't, I promise, darling. I promise.”

They sit that way for hours, Chloe drawing strength from him, and him, endlessly giving everything he could to her. Just as she sat up to apologize for crying on him, Trixie screamed, waking from a nightmare. Chloe rushed to get up, apologizing as she went, “Sorry, she always has one when Dan does this…”

Lucifer followed her to her daughter's door, leaning against the doorway. Trixie was crying, clutching at her mother like she was scared she was going to lose her (her mother behaving in much the same way, tears running down both their faces, and he was absolutely gone for the both of them, he knew right then). She caught sight of him as she looked up from her mother's shoulder, and sobbed his name, reaching a hand out to him (and his heart did break for her at that, right in half). 

He pulled her out of her mother's arms, letting her cling to him as she cried. He didn't try to soothe her with words, and instead started humming for her (low and soothing, like he could barely remember his mother doing so many eons ago). She calmed enough to shakily ask if he knew any lullabies (specifically: “the one with the mocking bird and the looking glass?”) and he told her he did. She asked him to sing.

He took a deep breath and placed a kiss to her forehead before he started. He was swaying and singing and rubbing his hand along her back, trying to help the woman who stood next to him (who was worried about her daughter, who wanted her daughter to stop having nightmares, who wanted her daughter to feel loved and whole and not like she's unimportant) get through the night without another breakdown. He had to sing it three times before the little girl settled, exhausted and breath hitching as she slept on his shoulder.

Chloe pulled the covers back as he set her down on the bed. He watched Chloe tuck her in and kiss her forehead before ushering him out of the room. She wrapped her arms around herself, and told him, “Thank you, Lucifer… She's usually up for hours.”

“Anytime, Detective,” he said, ducking his head to get her attention. “Literally, Chloe. Whenever she needs me, whenever you need me, darling,” Their eyes met and hold for a long moment, then she looked down and nodded. She meets his eyes again, and he knew that she meant to take him up on it.

×××

Lucifer sighed as he stood in the short line for ice cream. The spawn and her mother were waiting at a picnic table, laughing at nonsense. He watched them from where he was in line, smiling as they made faces at each other. He hadn't told them where he was going, just that he would return shortly.

He ordered three cones (one triple chocolate, one mint chip, and one moose tracks because he wanted something sweet) and made his way back to his girls. Not that they were his, or that he allowed himself to think of them like that for longer than a moment at a time.

“Here we are,” he said as he sat across from them. 

Trixie’s eyes widened, and she gasped in surprise. “Triple chocolate?!” she asked in quiet awe. At his nod, she grinned so wide that he thought her face was going to split. “Thanks, Lucifer!” she said, and started on her treat, almost ignoring the napkins he held out to her.

He offered the mint chip cone to the Detective and watched as she met his eyes in shock. “How’d you know?” she asked, taking the treat, and smiling shyly up at him.

“I always know, Detective,” he told her, smirk playing at his lips. She scoffed and rolled her eyes at him, picking up on his innuendo immediately. He laughed as she tried to hit his arm, missing as he leaned away from her.

Trixie called for their attention, demanding to know what they were going to do after their ice cream. They had just finished playing at the park, Trixie’s friends leaving just before they'd sat down. 

“I dunno, Monkey,” Chloe shrugged, “what do you wanna do?”

“Mom! I just asked you!” Trixie giggled. “We already did what I wanted to! And Lucifer got us ice cream, so now it's your turn!”

“Oh, it's my turn?” Chloe laughed, and met Lucifer’s eye. He was awed at the absolute happiness in her eyes directed at him and for a moment he couldn't breathe. Then Chloe opened her mouth and kept talking, and he made himself pay attention. “We could have a movie night,” Chloe suggested, smirking at her daughter.

“A Disney movie marathon?!” Trixie asked, unable to hold down her excitement. At Chloe’s nod, Lucifer groaned at the same moment Trixie cheered, which made the mother and daughter collapse into laughter. “Can we make a pillow fort in the living room for the movie marathon?” Trixie asked, practically vibrating with excitement. 

“Sure thing, Monkey,” Chloe smiled at her, gentle and loving. 

He’d never made a pillow fort before, and it was truly a magical thing. Pillows and couch cushions and blankets riddled the living room. They had watched so many movies that he wouldn't have been able to tell anyone what any of them were about.

He was currently lying on his back, Beatrice sleeping on top of him and the Detective snuggled into his side, almost asleep. He closed his eyes and let himself just be, like Linda had suggested he do.

She was extremely supportive of his wanting to be there for the spawn. She had told him that she was proud of him, that she was impressed even. He hadn't told her yet that he had been thinking of them as his, he didn't know what she would say to that. He just knew that he didn't deserve to call them that.

He knew that he would do absolutely anything for the pair of them. To keep them safe and happy. It was like the night Beatrice had her nightmare after they'd come back from dinner, he was completely gone for the both of them, absolutely gone in every single possible way. He didn't know if this was normal, and he put it on his mental list of things to ask Linda. 

Trixie shifted on his chest, snuggling deeper and taking a handful of his shirt. He rubbed a soothing hand along her back and placed a kiss to the top of her head. He knew the Detective was only dozing (she wasn't snoring), she sighed deeply before tucking her nose into his shoulder and taking a deep breath. He didn't let himself think about what that might mean, what she could've meant by doing that. Instead he hushed her, and placed a kiss to her forehead, hoping against his father, and everything else in this world, that he could have this, just for a little while longer.

×××

Lucifer spent more and more time with the two of them. Daniel had seemingly decided that work was far more important than his daughter, and Trixie was feeling abandoned. She had found a stable figure in Lucifer, though. He would always stop whatever he was doing when she called him or asked to spend time with him. She knew that a few times he had left in the middle of meeting his brother and his mom just because she had asked to see him. 

One night she heard her mom talking to Lucifer about her, she had told him that he didn't need to always agree to spend time with Trixie. Lucifer had simply replied that he had promised to never be too busy.

(“You don't always have to agree to come whenever she calls,” Chloe told him as they sat on the couch. Trixie had called him in the middle of an extremely heated argument with his mother, and Chloe had heard the call, and the harpy like injections of his mother in the background, because her daughter had put her phone on speaker. Dan had forgotten to book the day off for their daughter's school play. She got to be the narrator in her class’s section.

“I promised her that I'd never be too busy, Detective,” he told her, matter-of-factly. “I promised her that I would always show up whenever she asked me to… I always keep my word.”

Chloe stared at him for a long time after that, tears in her eyes, on the verge of falling, but not quite there yet. She leaned into his arms and wrapped her arms around him. Her face tucked into his neck and her arms around his waist. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around her, like he thought she would reject him if he moved too fast. She didn't pull away for a long time.)

She knew that he wasn't her dad, but sometimes she really wished he was. He always asked about her day when they saw each other, and he always listened. He never treated her like a baby, and he made her feel smart and special, like her dad used to when he had been around more. 

This time, she really needed him. She was at her dad’s house and she had had a nightmare. And while her daddy was good at making her feel better after a nightmare, she wanted to feel extra safe, and that's where Lucifer came in.

She snuck her phone out of her bookbag and called Lucifer as she hid under her blankets. She didn't want to wake her dad and was trying not to cry too loudly. When he answered she let out a quiet sob of his name.

“Beatrice, darling, are you alright?” he asked, seemingly intent on her answer. She heard her mother in the background and smiled. They had to work which was why she was with her dad.

“I had a nightmare,” she whimpered, sniffling. “Will you sing to me?”

“As long as you promise to go back to sleep,” he told her. She heard him tell her mother something as she promised she would. “Alright, lie down, dearest heart,” he said, soft and gentle like he always did for her these days, especially on nights like this. He made sure she was settled and sang “the mockingbird song” twice in a row. She wasn't asleep, but she was close when he whispered ‘goodnight’ and hung up. She fell back into dreamland with a smile on her face.

×××

“Is she okay?” Chloe asked as he hung up the phone. 

He nodded with a sigh. “She's asleep,” he told her. “Said she had a nightmare…”

Chloe nodded, biting her lip. “Why wouldn't she wake Dan?” she wondered aloud. “Not that it's bad she called you! I'm glad she did,” she hurried to explain, “It's just that she always used to want her dad after she had a nightmare…”

“I don't know, Detective,” he told her. “I told her to call whenever she needed me.”

Chloe stared at him for a long moment. How had this man, this crazy, unpredictable man, become one of the most stable people in her daughter's (and her) life? She smiled, and hit him softly on the arm as she looked back towards the warehouse, “Wanna spend the day with me and Trix tomorrow?”

She saw him smile softly out of the corner of her eye. “I would be delighted, Detective,” he replied just as soft as his smile.

They spent the rest of their stakeout in comfortable silence until their target showed up, and the chase was on.

×××

Lucifer closed his eyes and let himself breathe in the calm he was feeling. He had no idea what the Detective and her daughter had roped him into watching, he just knew he was comfortable. The Detective was leaning into his side, her attention on whatever was on the television, and her spawn was on his other side, also leaning on him. He didn't dare move, fearing that if he did, they would shift away from him.

He was warm and boneless, and he was more than sure that one or both of them were asleep, but as he was on the verge of sleep himself, he wasn't particularly bothered by that fact. He felt a huge yawn roll through him and relaxed further. He felt the Detective pull away from him slightly and made a noise in protest, letting himself smile sleepily at her soft laugh.

He felt her run her fingers through his hair and opened his eyes to see her watching him with an expression he didn't quite understand. He offered her a small smile and a long sigh; she took them from him with her usual grace, an offer of her couch until morning, and a gentle kiss to his stubbled cheek. He was asleep before she had carried Beatrice into her room for the night.

The next morning, he woke to Beatrice climbing onto him and snuggling into his side. She tucked herself under his arm and flung hers around his chest. He let her settle and then placed a kiss on her forehead. He rumbled a ‘good morning’ to her and asked her what she wanted for breakfast.

“Can we have french toast?” she asked through a yawn. “And bacon? And cheesy eggs?”

Lucifer made a noise of acknowledgement in the back of his throat, but stayed where he was, eyes closing. He was content enough for now to linger in this moment with the spawn. She didn't seem to mind it either, seemingly glad to just be near him. He wondered why, and then he wondered if this was something she usually did with her father. Daniel didn't seem the type for morning cuddles; he probably got up at five in the morning to exercise like the atrociously active person he was. Beatrice yawned and snuggled even further into him, bringing his attention back to her. He didn't know why she found him comforting or reassuring. He didn't even know why she insisted on spending time with him or why he enjoyed it, but here they were acting like they were family and always had been.

They stayed like that for a while, until Lucifer heard Beatrice’s stomach growl loudly. With a chuckle, he carried her into the kitchen, so he could start on breakfast. 

The little girl chattered to him as he cooked, he was used to that, she rarely ever stopped talking, and he hadn't fully woken up yet, so he let her talk to him and even responded much gentler than usual (even so, when Beatrice told him that he was much cuddlier than he usually was this morning, he just sighed and stretched with a shrug). She yawned, and then he yawned, and then she giggled at him. He turned away and smiled into the coffee machine, not wanting her to know he was laughing too. He knew the smell of coffee would wake the Detective, so he had saved that until the rest of breakfast was almost ready.

She appeared almost instantly and wrapped her arms around him from behind. He jumped in surprise and froze, still not really used to casual affection and more awake than he had been when the spawn came to cuddle with him earlier. She stayed there for a long moment, and he relaxed slowly, she just settled her body deeper into his and sighed. Eventually he shuffled over to the coffee maker with her still attached to him and doctored her a cup. He tried to pry her hands away from his middle to hand it to her, but she groaned and squeezed him tighter.

He rolled his eyes at her daughter who just giggled. “Here, spawn, take your plate and go… somewhere, I suppose,” he sighed, offering her a plate piled high with french toast, confectioners’ sugar, bacon, and eggs. She grinned and ran off to the living room to start her Saturday morning ritual of cartoons. 

He rested his hand on the Detective's as they rested on his middle. She let one trail up until it was resting on the center of his chest and he tried not to shudder but couldn't quite stop it. She just held him tighter and that's when he realized that something wasn't right.

He maneuvered her so that she was plastered to his front instead of his back and asked gently, a hand smoothing up and down her back, “How did you sleep, darling?”

She sighed and buried her nose deeper into his chest, shaking her head softly back and forth. He wrapped both arms around her and let her just stay there. Eventually, she pulled her face away from his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. “I had weird dreams and I couldn't get comfortable,” she told him, grumpily. 

He huffed out an amused breath and hugged her tighter. “Poor Detective,” he offered, trying his damnedest not to lean down and slide his nose along the side of hers. Instead, he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead, and rested his chin on the top of her head.

She inhaled deeply, settling into him, sipping comfort from him, enjoying every second she spent in his space. She never let herself just be around him, but just this once she needed him, and they had caught each other at the perfect time. Nothing urgent needing their attention, no one around to demand anything from them. She pulled away a long while later, and smiled gently at him, raising on her toes to kiss his cheek, lingering just a little too long.

“Breakfast, darling,” he told her, handing her a full plate, almost identical to her daughter's. He placed her coffee in her other hand when she started looking around for it. 

Somehow, when she took a sip it was still the perfect temperature, and she smiled tenderly at him because of it. “Come on, we have to watch cartoons with Trix before we start the day,” she told him. She smiled at him (with that smile she reserved just for him, and only when he'd been very, very sweet, and only in their most intimate of moments) and he was powerless against her. He followed after her like she had reached into his chest and tied the four corners of his heart to the tips of her fingers. She could splay them, and he would be absolutely helpless against her.

×××

Lucifer found himself spending more and more time with both the Detective and her spawn (which is how he found himself at a school picnic of some sort). There were game nights, movie nights, ‘family’ outings, and things of that nature. He had never felt like he belonged among people before but with the two of them, he felt as close to belonging as he ever had. It was almost as if the two of them were family (not that he knew what family felt like; eons and eons had wiped the feeling from his extensive memory.) The feeling surpassed even what he felt for his mother and brother. 

The Detective caught sight of him and waved him over. She was standing with a woman who had short blond hair, and who looked very interested in him. As he arrived at their side, he slipped his arm around Chloe and placed a kiss on her cheek. “Hello, Detective,” he told her. 

She smiled at him and introduced him to Sharon Miller, a mother of a child in Trixie’s class. As he shook her hand, he heard Trixie screech his name. 

She flung herself into his legs and chanted his name until he managed to scoop her into his arms. “Hello, tiny urchin,” he greeted her with a chuckle as she tried to ‘hug him to death’. 

“You came!” she exclaimed, arms around his neck but no longer squeezing him. She settled in his arms and smiled at him (happy and excited and just for him and his heart clenched at the thought). “Did you meet Tony’s mom?” she asked him.

“Is Tony’s mum Ms. Miller?” he asked, eyebrow raised. At her nod and giggle, he told her that yes, he had met Tony’s mother, and that she was nice.

“Mom, can Lucifer meet my teacher?!” Trixie asked, bouncing in his arms. He chuckled and looked to the Detective for guidance.

“If he wants to, babe, but you have to ask him,” she replied. She nodded almost imperceptibly at Lucifer, letting him know he could do as he wished. 

Trixie looked up at him and grinned. “You wanna?” she asked, barely holding in her excitement.

“Of course, I do, little love,” he told her, softly and fondly. She cheered and pointed him in the right direction, laughing as he walked off with her, playfully complaining about how she never used her own legs.

Sharon met Chloe’s eyes after they walked away. “That's a good-looking man. And he's good with kids…” she sighed dreamily, laughing as Chloe rolled her eyes.

“You’d think so, but if that were any other kid, he'd be having a panic attack,” Chloe laughed lightly. “He's… eccentric, but I think he's fond of her, at least.”

“So, he's good with your kid and he's hot,” Sharon said, “why aren't you all over that?”

Chloe laughed again and waved the question away, trying and failing to hide her blush. “He’s Lucifer, we're partners. Work partners, not- not that kind of partner! And he's really immature, but he's sweet sometimes too…” Sharon raised her brows at Chloe’s floundering, and the Detective sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “He's… complicated,” she said, finally.

After a few moments, Lucifer returned to her side sans “small human” as he sometimes called her (his arm slipping around her waist naturally, as it usually did these days. The other day they had been at a crime scene and he'd done it in front of Ella, who took a few pictures of them before they'd realized how they’d been standing). “How are you, darling?” he asked her, placing a quick kiss to the side of her head as he watched Trixie play with the other children. 

“Good,” she replied with a smile. She leaned into his side, and his arm pulled her tighter to him, like he couldn't get her close enough. They were quiet for a moment, and then she asked, “She okay? She didn't say anything about Dan, did she?”

He shook his head. “The little darling was too excited to think about him, I expect. Introduced me to everyone she saw,” he chuckled. There was another quiet moment until he asked, “Do you want me to come over tonight?”

Chloe smiled, but didn't turn towards him, watching thei- her daughter, _hers_ not theirs, probably never _theirs_. She took a deep breath and replied, “For a little bit. That okay?” He hummed in the affirmative and they let their attention be drawn to the other people around them.

(He did stay at hers for a while, and Trixie didn't have any nightmares. The first time since her father had ducked out on her. Chloe almost cried in relief, offering him the couch again. He declined but made sure she got to bed [she had fallen asleep on him earlier in the night, and he had let her, knowing she was exhausted. They had just closed an exhausting case earlier that day]. He assured her that he would lock up as he left and check on Beatrice before that. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow, and he kissed her forehead, just as he had for her daughter earlier that night.)

×××

He was on his way to pick up the spawn for a day of ‘fun’. She had insisted that he needed to pick her up that morning after breakfast, so they could spend the day together. She hadn't told him what she wanted to do, and he had a feeling it was going to be exhausting. But he had promised, so he made sure to be on time.

When he walked in, the Detective was in the kitchen, and surprisingly, Daniel was sitting at the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee in front of him. He raised a brow, confused at the other man’s presence (Trixie had spent the night at his, but she insisted on being brought back to her mother's before 8 that morning, to her father's chagrin), but continued towards the kitchen. 

“Morning, darling,” he said to the Detective as he walked up to her. She smiled at him and offered him her cheek as he leaned in to place a kiss on it. “Where's the little hellion? She told me I had to be here exactly at 8:30, and she's not even ready, is she? Typical human spawn!” he ranted good-naturedly, offering the Detective a wink.

Daniel looked between them, confused, “Uh… What exactly is he talking about?”

“Lucifer!” Trixie greeted as she walked out of her room. She ran at him and he scooped her up, accepting her hug with a quick, unsure glance at both Daniel and the Detective. “Are you ready?” she asked him.

He rolled his eyes as she settled on his hip. “Am I ready?” he scoffed. “Are you? You've got your shoes, yes? And whatever else you need?” At her sharp nod, he sighed, long-suffering and with a smirk, “Right, well, say goodbye to Mum… and your father, too, I s’pose.”

As they walked out the door, Daniel stared after them, more confused than he was before. “Chlo, what- I mean, where are they going?” he asked.

Chloe smiled at the closed door and replied, almost absently, “Trixie said she wanted to take him to the observatory, but I'm pretty sure she just wants to hear him grumble about crowds and snotty children.”

Dan just shook his head and drank his coffee. He wanted to ask what the hell she was doing letting someone like Lucifer hang out with their daughter alone, but he wasn't ready for her to yell at him when the sun was so high in the sky.

×××

After the first thirty minutes of the tour, the annoying tour guide finally stopped paying attention to him and Trixie. He pulled her away with him and they snuck into the planetarium, where a show was running, the stars being shown on the ceiling. There were only three other people in the room with them, and Lucifer made sure they were on the other side of the room from them.

They watched the stars, a peaceful silence stretching between them before Lucifer asked her, quietly, “Did you know I lit the stars?”

“Really?” she whispered back. He made a noise of affirmation in the back of his throat. “Which one was your favorite?” she asked as quietly as she could.

A gentle smile spread across his face. She was innocent and pure, of course she would want to know something like that. “I don't know; there are too many to choose from, but I am rather fond of that bunch there…” he told her pointing to a group off to the side.

×××

As they drove away from the observatory in the corvette, Trixie watched Lucifer closely. She had already decided that their next stop would be the beach. She had stopped asking to spend time with her dad weeks ago, and no one had really noticed. Her mom would ask every now and then if she wanted to spend time with him, but her only reaction was to shrug and say “if he's not too busy”. Sometimes, he was too busy and that still hurt, even though she thought it wouldn't anymore, but when he wasn’t, they would go do something fun together (they never had more fun than she did with Lucifer, but she loved her daddy, she really did…). She knew that her dad was always going to be her dad, but sometimes she wished her dad was more like Lucifer. He was always there for her, he always kept his promises, and he was never too busy for her. She knew that with Lucifer she was more important than work, just like she was with her mommy. She just wished sometimes that Lucifer… that her daddy was different.

“Is there something on my face?” Lucifer asked, raising a brow at her playfully. She giggled and shook her head, but her smile faded as she continued to think about her dad and Lucifer and her mom. “Well, what's the matter, darling? You seem… unlike yourself,” he continued when she didn't respond.

She bit her lip uncertainly but knew she could talk to him about anything and everything. Nervously, she blurted out, “Sometimes I wish that you're my dad!”

He was silent for a short while, and then, “Oh…” he said quietly. He was quiet for a long, long moment and opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. Trixie wasn't looking at him anymore but there were tears in her eyes, like she was terrified she'd done something wrong (and if that didn't break his heart as it always, always did, then who the hell did he think he was?). Lucifer sighed and told her, “I've wished the very same thing, Beatrice…”

“You have?” she asked, sniffling. 

“Yes, dearest heart,” he replied. “More than you know… and, Beatrice, I do… I do care for you as a father would, and I- I always will, but…”

“I know,” she sniffled again, a few tears trailing down her cheeks. “And I love you too, Lucifer.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, not used to expressing emotion or anything close to it. He was glad she could tell what he meant, that she didn't seem to need very many words from him, just action. 

She had wanted to tell him how in her mind she called him ‘Papa’ and sometimes when she would talk to other kids at the playground, she would tell them about Lucifer instead of her dad when they asked her about her family. She knew he wouldn't like that though, or he would freak out, more than not like it. Lucifer was weird sometimes.

They returned to the Detective's home a little before dinner time with ingredients to “make mommy the best dinner ever” but really it was just chicken enchiladas (even if they would be the best she'd ever had).

Chloe had been enjoying a book when they barged through the door, she bookmarked her page to Lucifer’s playful, “Honey, we're home!” in the worst American accent he could manage. She rolled her eyes and went to sit at the kitchen counter as her daughter told her about her day (“We saw the star show, and played in a tide pool at the beach, and Lucifer helped me get super close to a crab! But he wouldn't let me touch the dead jellyfish that washed up on the beach.”). 

Lucifer watched the two of them as he prepared dinner. He smiled as they interacted, trying not to think of them as his and failing miserably. He knew they weren't, but at times like this they certainly felt like they were. He let his body work, while his mind stayed with them and their conversation. He occasionally added a detail or two to Trixie’s stories of the day.

She was telling her mother about the talk they’d had in the car before she stopped mid-sentence and turned pink. She changed the subject, but the Detective met his eyes curiously. He gave her a small, reassuring smile and mouthed the word ‘later’ at her behind her daughter's back.

When dinner was ready, Chloe insisted that they eat at the table because she “hasn't seen their faces all day”. Lucifer loaded their plates and carried them all on one arm, which made Trixie giggle and the Detective roll her eyes. 

He grinned with pride when Chloe told him that dinner was delicious and winked at Beatrice when she giggled at him. As they ate, Lucifer felt more like they were his than he ever had before.

After Trixie had been put to bed, the Detective asked him to stay. They sat on the couch, glasses of wine in their hands, chatting idly about anything and nothing. 

“What was Trixie talking about earlier?” Chloe asked him, cutting herself off. “When she was talking about you guys in the car…”

Lucifer looked down into his wine glass and sighed. “Yes, I wanted to…” he tried to begin. He sighed heavily and met her eyes. “I don't want to overstep, Chloe. Your daughter means a lot to me, and I to her, I think, especially given what she told me during our conversation on the way to the beach…” He met her eyes again, she nodded at him reassuringly, and he continued, “She… she told me that she wished I was her father sometimes…”

“Oh, Lucifer,” Chloe sighed. 

She opened her mouth to continue, but he interrupted her with a quick shake of his head. Her brow furrowed, and he rushed to explain before she could take it the wrong way. “I told her that I wished the same thing, Detective,” he practically whispered, looking ready to be chastised.

Chloe just stared at him for a long moment (and she hadn't thought it was possible to fall anymore in love with him, but here she was falling and falling and falling right on her ass every single time). He wouldn't look at her, wouldn't even move (like he was waiting for her to hit him). It was moments like this when he broke her heart, made it ache for him and all the pain his family had put him through. “Lucifer,” she said softly, placing her hand on his arm (he flinched, and she would not to take it personally, she wouldn't) catching his eye, “it's okay. Thank you for telling me, and I’m glad that she feels like that. That you feel like that.”

Their gazes locked for a long, charged minute before Lucifer broke and looked down at her hand still on his arm. He covered her hand with his, and sighed out a ‘yes, well’ as he did when he was uncomfortable. He looked up again and caught her smiling gently at him in that way she had. The smile she had just for him, when he'd been sweet or “adorable” (which he had never been in his entire life, ever, thanks much). He offered her one back, gentle and soft, just hers, just like his heart.

×××

The next time they were all together as a ‘family’ was because Daniel had asked him to babysit Trixie. It was after he had killed his brother. He didn't think he should be around the child, but he wanted to be around her, around her mother (the amount of times Chloe had looked at him like she wanted to hold him, to comfort him had been infinite, and he was so very close to giving in, but he just didn't know how). He hadn't seen her for a while, though he had talked to her on the phone almost every night (and he knew that Chloe had told her not to ask to see him and he was glad because he'd been in no shape to see her, to even be near her). But he had missed her, missed spending time with her and the Detective outside of work. Missed that she was always excited to see him no matter what anyone else thought of him, no matter what he thought of himself.

Dan had asked him in the precinct in the middle of the day and then he had asked him not to tell Chloe. 

“Why wouldn't I tell her?” Lucifer asked. “She needs to know where her daughter is, who she's with, don’t you agree, Daniel?”

Daniel frowned, “She's my daughter too. I'll know where she is.”

Lucifer frowned. “Why do you need me to watch her? Isn't it your weekend?” 

Daniel sighed and told him, like he'd really rather not, “I have a date.”

Lucifer considered the man in front of him for a long moment. “You want me to babysit your daughter and not tell her mother about it, while you're out on a date. A date you could've scheduled for any other time this week, but you scheduled it while you had your daughter, who never gets to spend time with you,” he said all of this in a carefully blank voice. He wanted to show this man how angry he was on Beatrice’s behalf, wanted to give the man a glimpse of hell, but he didn't.

“You want to what?!” Chloe’s sharp tone broke through their tense silence, making the other detective wince.

“Chlo’,” Daniel started.

She cut him off with a vicious wave of her hand. “No. I will take her this weekend, but if you don't take her next weekend, Dan…” she trailed off threateningly, glaring at him. She turned towards Lucifer and told him firmly, but much softer than when she had been talking to Dan, “You're coming over tonight and spending time with her. She misses you and keeps asking me when you're going to feel better.”

“Of course, darling,” he replied, softly as if there were no doubt that he would.

That night he drove the Detective home in semi-comfortable silence. He was anxious to see the Spawn and he wasn't sure how she would react to his absence. He sighed heavily and glanced over at the Detective before tentatively asking, “Does she… is she upset with me? For abandoning her?”

“She's worried about you, and you didn't abandon her,” Chloe replied immediately. Wanting to soothe him somehow, she grabbed his hand. “I told her you were upset and needed some time to sort yourself out. She might get clingy; she really missed you, you know.”

His lips quirked up slightly. “I've missed her too,” he told her quietly. She smiled at him and when they pulled up to her apartment, she squeezed his hand before getting out of the car.

They walked through the door, and the babysitter greeted them, and quickly left. Trixie came into the living room from her room and froze at the sight of him. “Lucifer?” she asked, like she wasn't sure he was really there.

He smiled at her, a small, sad thing, and said, “Hello, dearest heart…” 

She flew into his arms, burying her face in his neck and clinging to him like she was never going to let him go again. She was crying into his neck (and his heart was breaking because it was his fault she was like this, he abandoned her, he really was a monster, really was the worst of the worst) and sniffling and saying something into his shirt collar over and over, but he couldn't quite understand her through her tears.

He shushed her, swaying from side to side, rubbing her back with his hand, and kissing her on the top of the head occasionally. “Come now, Beatrice, darling,” he said softly. “It's alright, dearest heart. I'm so sorry, love…” She hugged him tighter and sobbed, just a few more times, breaking his heart further. When he looked to the Detective, she had a hand covering her mouth and tears in her eyes, but they weren’t falling. He continued hushing Trixie, swaying and trying to calm her, “Dearest heart, you're alright. I'm not going anywhere, darling, I'm here. Shhh, love, you're alright…”

Eventually she stopped crying and pulled back to look him in the eyes. Her breath was hitching as she watched him. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “Mommy said you were upset and did something dangerous…”

Lucifer's face went slack with shock. The Detective wouldn't lie to her daughter, he knew, but he hadn't expected what she'd told her to be so close to the truth. “I'm better, little love,” he told her, wiping a tear away from her cheek.

“You're not hurt?” she asked, biting her lip. 

Lucifer sighed and rested his forehead against hers. “It wasn't that sort of…” he started to say but broke off on a sigh. “No, Beatrice, I'm not.”

“Then why did you stay away?” she asked him, tears streaming down her face again.

His features crumpled into grief and shame, though the child couldn't truly see the latter, and his voice broke when he answered, “I did something terrible, and I- I needed to-” he shook his head, trying to decide how to continue. “I couldn't let you see me like that…” he said, voice low, and full of self-hate, shame, and anger.

She nodded, like she understood, and he thought that she did in a way, not fully, of course, but partially. “Well, don't do it again, okay? I really, really missed you…” she told him softly.

He huffed out a watery laugh and told her, “I missed you too, dearest heart, very much…”

The Detective was right about her being clingy. She refused to let go of him the entire night, eventually falling asleep with her hand clutching at his vest. The Detective had offered to take her to bed, but Lucifer told her that “the spawn was perfectly fine where she was” and that she had “better not move the little darling” because she would wake up the next morning thinking that he had abandoned her again (“...and that's one thing I'll not stand for, darling. She needs to know that I keep my promises. I promised her that I’d be here when she woke.”).

For just a moment after Beatrice had fallen asleep, he had let himself lean on Chloe. She’d run a hand through his hair as she stood in front of him. He was on the couch and she'd stopped near him because she knew he was upset and that he definitely wasn't as okay as he made himself out to be. So, she ran her fingers through his hair as he was perched on the edge of the couch with her daughter in his arms. His eyes closed, and his face did a strange wriggle as he struggled with his emotions, but he leaned into her side as she stepped closer. She let him breathe her in for a few moments, letting him take as much comfort as he needed. When he pulled back his eyes were shinier than usual, and he cleared his throat like he was trying not to cry. She had wanted to cuddle him like he was cuddling her daughter, wanted to tell him that it was okay to cry, that he could trust her to be gentle with him… but she knew he wouldn't allow it. Or, rather, he would think himself undeserving. So, she settled behind his legs on the couch when he laid down at her request. She made sure her toes were pressed into the small of his back, just in case he decided that he needed her. She felt him relax at the contact. She fell asleep with a smile on her face, and the fact that he almost accidentally kicked her in the face while he slept, and she had been so very close to dropping off into sleep didn't diminish it one bit.

(When Trixie woke the next morning, she was curled up against Lucifer's chest and his arm was wrapped around her. They had been covered with a blanket, and her mother was curled up on the other side of the couch, behind Lucifer’s legs, one of her arms over his feet like she had been trying to keep them still. Trixie smiled and settled back into his arms to sleep. For the first time in a week, she felt like she had her family with her, whole and happy.)

×××

Chloe watched as Lucifer showed her daughter how to make the “best chocolate cake in the world”. They were in her kitchen, mixing cake batter and laughing together (she and her daughter both needed it after she found out who had actually killed John Decker). Dan had backed out of another day with her daughter, and Chloe was starting to wonder if she should even ask him if he wanted to spend time with their daughter anymore. 

When Chloe had told Trixie that her dad couldn't make it, the little girl had just shrugged and immediately asked if she could call Lucifer. He had shown up as soon as he could, just as he promised her daughter, with shopping bags filled with ingredients for both dinner and dessert. And that was becoming a regular thing, him making them dinner. She was perfectly okay at cooking, hadn't starved at least, but Lucifer was like a magician in the kitchen. Everything he made was delicious, and it was quickly becoming one of her favorite things (and really if she let herself think about it, she loved the sight of him in her kitchen, loved this domestic aspect of him, and on the days he spent the night, she would pretend he was holding her before she fell asleep. And if sometimes, she pretended to fall asleep against his shoulder, so he would carry her to bed, and she could feel his arms around her, well, no one knew that but her).

Lucifer barked a laugh at something her daughter said, catching her attention. Sometimes, when she stared at the both of them, she couldn't see Dan in her daughter's mannerisms anymore. All she saw was Lucifer. His gestures were making their way into her daughter's actions (and that confused head tilt was twice as adorable when the both of them were doing it at the same time). She wondered sometimes if Dan were to stop seeing his daughter completely, would Trixie stop looking like him? Would she start to resemble Lucifer instead?

“Mom, come here! Watch! Lucifer can juggle!” Trixie waved her over into the kitchen where Lucifer was juggling some of the produce he’d brought with him.

“I know, Monkey,” Chloe grinned. “I've seen him juggle before.”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “You knew the whole time and you never told me!” her daughter accused.

“Now, Beatrice, don't be mad at mum for not telling you. I was juggling evidence at the time, bit more important, or so she says,” Lucifer interrupted a smirk in Chloe’s direction. “Now, be a darling and fetch the cake tins, the round ones.” He winked at her when her daughter was distracted, and she rolled her eyes at him with a fond smile. This side of Lucifer (the domestic, flirty side that made her feel like they'd been together for years, that Trixie was _theirs_ and not just hers, and really the fact that she was falling for him shouldn't be as surprising as it was, but boy was she knocked on her ass by that every single time she thought about it) was her favorite.

She watched from her place at the counter as he showed her daughter how to bang the pans on the counter to get rid of air bubbles. The cake went into the oven and he whispered something to the little girl and she scurried off giggling. 

“What are you two planning?” Chloe asked him as he wiped off the counter.

Lucifer looked at her through his lashes, smirking. “And what makes you think we're planning anything, darling?” he asked, shifting into her space and hovering his hand over her waist (and while he had gotten more comfortable around them, he still had trouble initiating touch, freezing halfway there and leaving it up to them to follow through). 

She leaned into his hand, and she marveled at the pleasantly surprised look on his face (if his fingers tightened on her waist, she wouldn't mention it, she would lean further into him though). “You didn't answer my question, Lucifer… Now I know the two of you are up to something…” she said, bringing up a hand to brush away some imaginary something off his vest, right above his heart. She rested her hand there and breathed in slowly and carefully, so he wouldn't hear her breathe him in (he always smelled so good, and it wasn't fair). She loved it when he took off his suit jacket like he had today, his vest showcasing his broad shoulders and trim waist, because it meant he was comfortable in her home. 

“I'm not allowed to make dinner for my two favorite humans?” he countered, leaning into her making it very obvious that he was breathing her in. He offered her another wink, and she shifted closer, rolling her eyes.

“Now I'm completely convinced,” she told him, trying not to let him see her smirk. 

She turned away from him, so she could smile without him seeing, but he grabbed her hips from behind and pulled her flush with his body. “Darling, you know I would never lie to you…” he began, letting his nose skim her neck until it rested behind her ear, breathing her in again (and sometimes she loved that he didn't hold back with her anymore, that he really was attracted to her as much he said he was). 

She leaned back into his body and told him, “I know, but you haven't answered any of my questions.” Then she pulled away, smirking at him over her shoulder as she went to pour them both a glass of wine.

Trixie chose that moment to come back into the room, carrying a folded piece of construction paper covered in glitter and big sloppy letters. She ran to Lucifer and handed him a marker and the piece of paper. He winked at the Detective as he wrote something on what Chloe could only assume was a card and handed it back to her daughter. The little girl ran away again and returned within moments with an envelope. 

Lucifer made them dinner, (a very delicious take on rosemary chicken) and insisted that Chloe eat cake with them. She wasn't one for sweets, but she gave in when the both of them gave her matching pouts (and really that wasn't at all fair). So, she ate a slice of cake and Trixie grinned as she slid the envelope across the table to her mother.

“What's this?” Chloe asked, picking it up and playfully examining the outside. 

“You gotta open it, Mom!” Trixie told her bouncing up and down in her chair.

She opened her card, and her face softened immediately as she read the front. In her daughter's handwriting it said ‘Happy Partner-versary’ and there was a picture of a gun, a badge, and the devil emoji. She opened it and read his message to her (short, heartfelt, and so very Lucifer that she laughed and teared up at the same moment). She hugged her daughter and told her that she loved her card and the moment Trixie ran off to get ready for bed, she hugged Lucifer too. He was doing the dishes, and she hugged him from behind, making him jump. “Thank you, Lucifer,” she whispered. Then she kissed his shoulder through his vest, and she heard his breath catch before she pulled away.

(Later that night, she pretended to fall asleep against him, and he carried her to bed. Before he left her, he placed a long, tender kiss to her forehead and stroked her hair back from her face. All the other times he'd carried her to bed, he had never done anything like that before. She had felt him linger, felt him sit with her a little longer than was necessary, but he had never kissed her or stroked her hair. She couldn't help the smile that quirked her lips and she wasn't aware that she'd murmured his name the moment he’d leaned away. She was on the verge of sleep after all. She had also missed his sharp inhale at her saying his name, but she was asleep, so he would try not to look at that too closely.)

(As he drove home that night, a smile on his face, he failed at trying not to look too deeply into the way she sighed his name in her sleep. He was beyond the moon, beyond the stars in fact. His smile lasted until the next morning, and well into the afternoon.)

×××

Lucifer woke to the familiar sight of the Detective's living room and the unfortunate sensation of being watched. He wrapped a protective arm around the little girl curled into his side and looked around the room cautiously to see Mazikeen watching him. He sighed and raised an expectant brow at her when she just kept staring. 

“The small human usually comes and cuddles with me,” she said unhappily.

He blinked at her, confused for a moment. Then he remembered. “I've never spent the night when you were home, have I?” he asked.

Maze frowned deeper, “So?”

“She comes and finds me on the mornings I'm here,” he tells her. “She usually wants breakfast.”

“I heard her have a nightmare. She didn't come to my room; she came over here to you,” Maze told him. “She always comes into my room when she has a nightmare.”

Lucifer sighed and stroked Trixie's back as she shifted against him. That explained why it was still dark, and why he hadn't woken up when she came to him. He kissed her forehead absently before telling Maze, “She asks me to sing for her sometimes… after she's had one. I guess this one wasn't as bad.”

Maze rolled her eyes, “Find your own small human.” 

She got up and walked away, and he called after her, not too loud, but loud enough for her to hear, “She was mine first, Mazikeen.”

The demon heard the finality in his voice, recognized it for what it was: a claim to the girl, a protection. She smirked, thinking of what would become of the person who tried to do harm to Beatrice Decker and her mother. She hoped she would get to witness what he would do.

×××

The Detective had answered her phone as they left the house of the person they had just questioned (another dead end). She answered it in her typical way and grabbed hold of Lucifer's arm as she slowed to a stop. 

“She's sick?” she said into the phone. A pause. “Yeah, I'll come and get her… Thanks…”

“Everything alright?” Lucifer asked. 

Chloe shook her head and dragged him to the car. “Trixie got sick at school, and Dan’s not answering his phone,” she told him. “We need to pick her up as soon as possible.”

“Lead the way, darling,” he replied.

When they got to Trixie’s school, Chloe led them to the little infirmary in record time. As soon as Trixie saw her mother, she stretched her arms out towards her with a trembling pout. When her mother picked her up, the little girl caught sight of Lucifer and sobbed his name, reaching for him. 

Lucifer sighed deeply, like he didn't want to hold a sick child, but, since he was utterly and completely gone for the little girl reaching for him, he eased her from her mother's arms. He cuddled her close, rubbing her back to comfort her. Beatrice had a portion of his suit jacket clutched in one of her little hands, and she had tucked her head under his chin as if to protect herself from the rest of the world. He watched Chloe as she signed her daughter out of school and then talked to the teacher for a moment.

When she walked back to him, he asked her, “Anything I can do for you, Detective?”

Chloe smiled at him like she thought he was being sweet. “No, but thank you, Lucifer…” she said, “It looks like today's going to be cut short…”

He frowned at her, “If you're sure, darling…” When she nodded, he drew the spawn away from him. “Feel better, dearest heart. Have your mother call if you need me, hmm?” he told her in his most gentle voice, and then he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. He watched their car drive away, his heart leaving with them, and he was left feeling, once again, like a piece of him was missing.

That afternoon, not even two hours later, Chloe called him and asked him to bring her ginger ale, crackers, and children's Motrin. “She's sicker than I thought, and I forgot to stop on the way home…” she'd told him. He had agreed and told her he'd be there as fast as he could. 

He didn't bother knocking when he got there, just opened the door and walked in, as he was wont to do. Chloe came to greet him at the door and sighed, resting her forehead briefly against his shoulder like she needed his support (she had become so much more tactile after they had found her father's real killer). One of his arms banded around her and he let her take the comfort she needed from him.

“She's been asking for Dan, but he won't answer his phone…” she began. “She gets needy when she's sick, and I don't know if she's going to be upset that you're not him, I just know that you show up when we need you…” She took a deep, shaky breath and pulled back to look him in the eye. 

“I promised her… I promised the both of you,” he told her, smoothing a piece of her hair behind her ear. They stared at each other for a long moment, until Chloe shook herself out of the moment and turned away from him.

She led him over to the couch, and after he handed her the bag of things she asked him to collect, he crouched in front of the sleeping little girl. She wasn't deeply asleep, he could tell, and when he put a hand to her forehead her eyes fluttered open. Her chin trembled, and she opened her mouth to say something, but quickly covered it to cough. 

Lucifer scooped her into his arms, holding her like one would hold a baby, before sitting down with her in his arms. He placed an infinitely gentle kiss to her forehead and when he pulled away, she was staring at him with tears in her eyes. “What's the matter, dearest heart?” he whispered, tucking her blanket closer around her.

“I thought you weren't gonna come,” she told him. “I asked mommy to call you before, but she didn't.”

“I'll always come when you call me, little love,” he told her. He placed another kiss to her forehead and brushed away the tears she let fall.

He looked up to see the Detective staring at her daughter with a small frown. She held a small cup of medicine and a regular cup with ginger ale in it. “Here, Monkey, take this medicine for me, okay?” she asked her daughter. The little girl sat up in his arms and quickly took the medicine, making a face at the taste and hastily taking a sip of ginger ale to wash it down.

When Trixie had fallen asleep (hand curled into the fabric of his shirt and nose buried in his shoulder), Chloe sat herself next to them. She was adjusting the blankets around her daughter when she told him, “I didn't know she was asking for you… she just kept saying ‘papa’ and I thought she… I thought Dan had taught her to call him something different…”

Stunned, Lucifer sat there and stared at the little girl in his arms. She really thought of him like that. He knew, she had told him so before, but he hadn't actually expected… He looked up to meet Chloe's eyes, and saw that she was absolutely floored at the idea like he was. It was so unexpected that the both of them were blindsided by it. 

He was almost overwhelmed by the love and trust that Beatrice Decker had handed him. He wasn't quite sure what to do with it, but he was determined to keep it.

×××

Lucifer was still reeling about how Chloe had saved Lux. He couldn't believe that she had done that for him, and she wanted nothing in return. She told him that it was what friends did for each other, but he felt like he would be thanking her forever.

So, he stood outside her apartment and stared at the door, trying to decide if he wanted to knock on it. Well, he wanted to, but he wasn't sure if he should. It was the weekend, and he could hear them getting ready to watch a movie. Maze was there, he could tell, but he didn't know if he would be welcome. He wanted their company, was feeling out of place at Lux and in his penthouse, but he had never been the one to initiate their spending time together.

He felt unsettled and standing here outside their door was the closest he’d come to making that feeling go away. And he was unbelievably selfish, so of course he knocked, and barged in like he usually did. He was greeted by a scowling Maze, an eye roll from his Detective, and of course, an excited shout of his name. 

He ran a hand through Beatrice’s hair after she attached herself to his leg. She was grinning up at him and he couldn't stop the gentle smile that covered his face. He let her drag him over to the couch and sat down exactly where she told him to. As she climbed into his lap, and as Chloe leaned against him, he felt more at home than he ever had at Lux.

×××

Chloe hadn't told him how long her mother was staying, but he knew she was there for the night. They were going to go out to dinner, but then she had asked him to come over instead because Trixie had asked to see him (he was going to take her out, so he could take her mind off of the trial, but perhaps she needed time with her family more). He barged in as he usually would, calling out a greeting. 

“Lucifer!” Trixie shouted and in her excitement she almost tripped as she ran to him. This caused her to barrel into his legs at full speed.

He raised his brows at her, as she grinned up at him. “How much sugar have you had today, you urchin?” he asked, peeling her away from his legs and hugging her close. 

She hugged him around the neck and laughed. “You're silly! I’m just excited! Grandma’s here, and she was telling me stories about filming her movies,” she chattered at him about anything and everything, switching topics every half minute (and kept chattering at him). So, he carried her through the apartment, placing a gentle kiss and his usual softly mumbled greeting of ‘hello, darling’ to the Detective’s cheek as he went. He waved a greeting to Penelope as he sat on the couch with Trixie on his lap. “...and then, after Stephen made a noise, we had to start the Five-Minute Silence all over again! So, we had ten whole minutes of silence! It was terrible!”

“That sounds absolutely dreadful,” he told her, completely deadpan. She rolled her eyes at him (but she was grinning so big it lost most of its effect), reminding him so much of her mother that he smiled back at her. “How was your science test?” he asked, knowing she had been worried about it.

“I got an eighty-nine!” she beamed at him. 

“Excellent, darling,” he told her, smoothing her hair back from her face. Beatrice finally settled against him, head resting on his chest and arms still around him. 

The Detective sat next to them and handed him a cup of tea just the way he liked it with a smile. “Monkey, did you tell him about what's happening at school next week?” she asked with a sly grin.

At this, Beatrice became animated again. Extremely so. She bounced on his knees (causing the Detective to save his tea and move it to the coffee table) and sat up on her knees so she could look directly into his face. “Lucifer!” she said. He raised a brow at her, and she giggled at him before continuing, “There's a daddy/daughter day at school! Like a field day, or something! But I was wondering if you wanted to come with me!” she asked. Before he could answer, she continued in a rush, “I know you don't like when there's lots’a kids around, so if you don't wanna come I can ask Daddy…”

Lucifer met the Detective's eyes in surprise. He was usually the second choice for things like this. But both the Detective and Beatrice were smiling at him, one in reassurance and the other anxiously (like she expected him to say no, even though he never, ever has, and it still breaks his heart no matter how many times it happens). He smiled softly at them, and said, “Of course I’ll be there, dearest heart.”

In return he gets a hug that would've knocked him backwards if he had been standing, and that smile the Detective sometimes gave him when he'd been particularly sweet. After a long moment of being practically choked by the spawn, she pulled back slightly and asked, “What are we having for dinner?”

Lucifer sighed, long-suffering and with a roll of his eyes, “You lot only ever want me to feed you. I don't know why I keep coming around…” But he got up and made his way over to the kitchen, that was, of course, after he had dumped Beatrice onto her mother, causing them to break into laughter.

“It's because you love us!” Beatrice called after him. He turned from his place at the fridge, a few tomatoes in hand, and raised his brows at them, as if to say ‘is that the best you can come up with?’. Beatrice broke into giggles again and cuddled her mother like that would change his mind on the matter. (It would, it did, and he had to turn away, so they didn't see him melt. He was absolutely gone for them both and it kept catching him off guard, especially at moments like this.)

A few moments later he was joined at the kitchen counter by Penelope. He offered her a smile and she gave him one in return, staring at him, almost contemplating his presence here in her daughter’s home. After a few long moments of slightly tense silence, she asked, “Why are you the one my granddaughter is asking to Daddy/Daughter day?”

Lucifer had just finished putting his ingredients together for his pasta sauce when she asked her question. He almost threw a whole tomato across the room in surprise. He cast a quick glance in the direction of his girls. He sighed. Not _his_ girls, not really, but he could hope… He shook himself out of his thoughts and told her, “I don't know… Usually I'm the back-up for that sort of thing.” When she just stared at him, brow raised he tried to elaborate. “Daniel… hasn't been… he's been a bit… absent, as of late… and I promised Beatrice that I’d be there when he couldn't… so I've been filling in, so to speak…” He trailed off awkwardly, focusing on making dinner.

Penelope’s expression lightened. She smirked and told him, “You're the reason they've both been smiling so much.”

“I'm not entirely sure about that, my dear,” he told her, self-deprecating smile in place, “but I hope so…” He looked over at them exactly when Chloe squealed in laughter. Beatrice giggling madly as she tickled her mother nonstop. He huffed a laugh out of his nose and smiled tenderly in their direction.

Penelope sighed and shook her head. Her daughter and her partner were so dense that they couldn't see what was right in front of them. They were practically in a relationship already, and, it seemed, they were co-parenting her granddaughter. She wanted to sit them down and beat them over the head with that information, but she knew it would just drive them away from each other. She could tell that they weren't ready to face it just yet.

So, she sat back and watched as Lucifer put the finishing touches on dinner and set the table for four. The smell of food finally lured the mother and daughter to the table. Penelope had never seen a child eat that many vegetables with no complaints. When she asked Trixie about it, she was told that “everything Lucifer makes tastes delicious, even every vegetable ever”. As she ate, she had to agree, it was the best pasta she had ever had, and she'd been to Italy.

After dinner, Trixie insisted that everyone had to cuddle on the couch until bedtime because it had been a bad day for all of the grownups. So, she sat on her mom's lap with Penelope and Lucifer on either side of them. She told her mother that she had to lay her head on Lucifer's shoulder because “that's where it always goes, mom! Duh!”. Then she made sure that her grandma was leaning on Chloe's other side, so they made a “mom sandwich”.

They sat like that, talking softly and laughing at funny stories until Trixie started yawning almost non-stop. Lucifer peeled her off of her mother with ten whole minutes left until bedtime. She was asleep before he had her in his arms.

×××

Lucifer knew he had a lot of meaningless sex (or he used to, not really very much anymore). Well, he thought they were all special, of course, but he knew they hadn't regarded him that way. They thought he was an excellent lover, obviously, but he didn't mean anything to them (he told himself constantly that he never meant anything to anyone, so really, hearing it shouldn't have hurt him as deeply as it did, but sometimes… sometimes, on his loneliest nights, he hopes he's wrong, just once, just about this…). So, when they were interviewing his past lovers, he acted cocky, telling Daniel what he called his ‘moves' and describing them in great detail to see how far Daniel would let him go before cutting him off. Of course, when Chloe had asked him the last time he'd had sex with ‘the stewardess’ he'd told her it was months ago, that she had called him last night, but he hadn't answered or called back. They had her phone records and her call to him was her last (“I was with you, darling,” he told her softly, sitting across from her at the interrogation table. He knew it was procedure, but it did hurt the tiniest bit, he knew he didn't deserve her trust, so he complied without argument. “We were putting Beatrice to bed and she'd asked me to read to her… the last two chapters of the second _Harry Potter_. We sat with her until she fell asleep… We had a drink, wine, and then I went home after you went to bed. Around 2:30 I believe.”). He was cleared, his alibi was airtight, obviously, and as soon as they exited the room Chloe led him to her desk and told him, “It's not because I don't trust you, it's because we need it on file that you weren't anywhere near her. I don't want a repeat of the Malcolm situation.”

He agreed and rested his face in his hands. Chloe ran a hand through his hair, her nails scraping his scalp lightly, and he relaxed under her touch. “I haven't had sex with anyone in a little over three months,” he sighed heavily, “and the one time someone really tries they get murdered…”

Chloe stepped closer and tugged lightly at his hair to get his attention. He moaned quietly and pushed his head into her hand, finally looking her in the eye for the first time since they’d left the interrogation room. She huffed a laugh at him, dragging her hand from his hair and using it to cradle his face. “Gross,” she mumbled teasingly. He rolled his eyes at her and placed a soft kiss to the hand on his face. “Come on,” she told him with a gentle smile, “we’ve got a case to solve.”

He followed after her like he usually did. A step behind her, covering her flank, letting her lead him, and she barely looked back, confident that he would be right where he always was. 

When they found their second victim, another conquest of his, he was upset, obviously. He wouldn't stop working the case, but he was just a little shaken. He felt like it was his fault, wanted to know if they had been targeted because of him, so when they found out that it was the cargo they were carrying he was just a little relieved.

That, of course, meant that they had someone making rare poisons who needed to be dealt with. They never got their answers on that, but they knew they would find out eventually. Well, he had a lot of faith in the Detective’s ability, so he wasn't too worried about it. 

They sat together at her desk, her working steadily on the paperwork and him mostly staring into space, his mind wandering and settling on her. How he wasn't worth her time, how she was special, not just to him, but in general. And she was special. Her and her daughter, the little hell-spawn, he thought fondly. He caught the Detective staring at him, her chin in her hand and a thoughtful smile on her face. He raised a brow at her, and her smile turned bashful. “You are coming over tonight?” she asked him, trying to sound casual, but to anyone listening she sounded very anxious. “Trix has her mind set on _Mike’s_ and I wanted to know if you'd come with us… well, Trixie was wondering. I mean I was wondering too… but-”

Lucifer’s face softened into a smitten smile at her suggestion. And he cut her off with a quick ‘yes’. “Of course, I'll be over,” he told her, eyes soft and smile softer. “We can go back to yours after,” he suggested, looking down at his hands, “watch a movie or have a game night… It is a weekend after all.” He peeked at her through his lashes.

Chloe grinned at him, “Yeah, we can do a movie or something. We’ll let Trix decide, she'll love it...”

They smiled shyly at each other, and as they finished up. He followed her home in his car, which meant he playfully gestured for her to drive faster as he got her attention from her rearview mirror (he had tried to get her to race at one point, but she had rolled her eyes so hard he thought she'd sprained something). He practically flew to the front door as they parked in her complex. 

Chloe grinned and called after him, “You're almost as excited as she's gonna be when she sees you.”

“As she should be, Detective,” he replied. “The little urchin has good taste.” And as soon as he opened the door, she heard her daughter squeal excitedly. 

“Thanks, Olga,” Chloe said to the babysitter as she walked past her. The older woman, never paused in her muttering as she passed. Chloe made it to the door and the sight behind it made her heart and smile soften. Lucifer had her daughter in his arms and they were dancing. Their hands were clasped, and he was spinning them around in graceful circles (and, she realized, he was waltzing around the room with her daughter and really she shouldn't be surprised that he knew how to waltz, but she was and for a moment she let herself be dazzled by that thought). She laughed as Lucifer dipped Trixie, she was practically hanging upside down from his arms. “Okay, you two, let’s get in the car, we've got a diner to go to,” she said trying to sound serious.

Trixie gasped, “ _Mike’s_?” At her mother's nod, she cheered and scrambled down from Lucifer's arms to hug her mother. “Come on, come on! We have to go!” she said, pulling on Chloe's arm. “Can we get chocolate cake?” she asked as she stopped her excited pulling, eyes wide.

“I don't know,” Chloe said winking at her partner. “What do you think, Lucifer? Cake?”

“That is a tough question, darling,” he grinned, closing the door behind him. “Perhaps we should wait and see. Maybe if that little urchin of ours behaves, hmm?”

“Excellent plan,” Chloe said, trying to hide her grin from her daughter (she was also trying to stop her heart from fluttering quite so fast. He referred to her daughter as theirs, something she's accidentally done before, but Lucifer never lies, so he actually thought of her daughter as partly his and that… she let herself fall just a little bit farther for him at that).

Trixie immediately pouted, aiming her doe eyes right at them, and Lucifer had to fight not to let their ruse fall. He'd do absolutely anything for his dearest heart when she looked at him like that. Her eyes were the same shape as her mother's, which never helped him fight against their effects. He looked over at Chloe and found her smiling at him, her eyes gentle and open. He ducked his head and smiled back, before telling them both to get a move on (“Chop, chop! We don't have all the time in the world!”).

Chloe asked him to drive them in her car, muttering something about it reminding her of their first ‘family trip’ to _Mike’s_. So, he settled in the driver's seat, and waited for Beatrice and Chloe to buckle their seatbelts before driving off (and if it was a bit faster than it should've been, that was just so Chloe would make that squeaking sound she always does when she’s surprised, and so Beatrice would laugh with him as her mother told him to slow down).

Mike was welcoming as he always was, and at the end of their meal they had gotten Beatrice her chocolate cake (which came with vanilla ice cream, courtesy of Mike himself). Trixie had opted for game night instead of a movie and was very excited when they suggested that Lucifer might be spending the night. 

What they hadn't counted on, was Daniel being at the front door when they pulled up. Chloe frowned and greeted him as her daughter hugged him, “Hey, what's going on? Did something happen?”

Dan raised a brow, “I can't want to spend some time with my family?”

“That's not what I meant, Dan,” Chloe sighed. “You usually don't come over unless you're dropping Trixie off or picking her up. I thought your weekend was next weekend, is all.”

Dan frowned and said loudly, “What's that supposed to mean?”

Lucifer cleared his throat loudly. “Perhaps not outside. Or in front of the child,” he said, his voice laced with steel, aimed at Daniel. 

“You can't tell me how to act around my family!” Daniel shouted so suddenly and furiously that Beatrice flinched away from him back into Lucifer, hiding her face in his stomach. 

Lucifer only raised his brow at the other man, picking up the little girl and walking past him into the apartment. “Come, dearest heart, let's find something to read while mum talks to Daniel, yeah?” he said softly into her hair.

They heard the front door close while they busied themselves in her room (her door also closed to drown out the impending argument). They settled on a book about dragon riders, and Lucifer made sure his voice was loud enough to drown out most of the argument happening on the other side of the door. They (just Beatrice, not him at all, thanks much) were so engrossed in the story, that they missed the knock at the door. 

Chloe poked her head into the room and smiled, despite the argument she'd just had (Dan saying she was corrupting their daughter by letting her spend time with Lucifer, and her quietly countering his points by how her daughter's performance in school, both socially and academically, has skyrocketed because of the other man's influence, and how, if he were around more, he'd see that, and that just ended in Dan walking away, saying he might have to work next weekend, which is why he came by, hoping to switch weekends [“You can't keep doing this, Dan, she needs stability!”], and maybe she could get Lucifer to take Trixie since he's such a great father figure for her, which ended with her crying in the kitchen because he's still her daughter's father, and it hurts her when he doesn't want to be with his daughter). Trixie was cuddled onto Lucifer's chest, listening to his voice rumble through it, and he was reclined on her bed, shoulders against the headboard, book held in front of him, reading loud enough to drown out any sounds from outside the room. She let the sight of her little makeshift family soothe her for a long while. Eventually, Lucifer caught sight of her and nudged Trixie, so she would get off of him.

“Are you and dad done fighting?” Beatrice asked shyly. When Chloe nodded, she asked, “Do I have to go with him this weekend instead of stay here?”

“No, baby,” Chloe said, trying and barely succeeding to hold back tears. “You're staying here, and we can play games or watch a few movies. Whatever you want to do, Monkey.”

“Can we play Sorry?” she asked, unsure. And then more excited, she asked, “And Life? Or Uno?”

Chloe chuckled, and told her, “Yeah, we can, Monkey. Go set up the board, okay?” As Trixie scurried away, Lucifer rose gracefully and tentatively edged his way into her space. He let her decide if she wanted his comfort, and when she leaned into him, he wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest for the briefest of moments before pulling away reluctantly. “Come on, Trixie’s waiting,” she told him wiping her eyes with a sniffle.

They played two and a half board games before Trixie started nodding off between turns. Lucifer picked her up off the floor, smiling when she groaned in protest. He tried to settle her in bed, but she held tight to his vest, and wouldn't tell him why she was acting clingy (he suspected it was her mother's argument with Daniel). So, he stood and walked her around the room, singing her lullaby to her as he rubbed her back. After he sang it four and a half times, she went boneless against him, well and truly asleep this time. He tucked her in and suddenly became aware that he was being watched. He looked up and saw Chloe watching them with tears in her eyes. 

He ushered her out of Trixie’s room and gathered her in his arms. When they were settled on the couch, her crying steadily but softly into his chest, he asked her, “What's the matter, my dearest darling?”

“Why does he do this to her?” She asked him. “How can he expect her to just drop everything for him, every single time? Sure, he's her father! But she can't disrupt her life for him, just like that, all the time! We've switched weekends so many times I've forgotten whose weekend it was supposed to be sometimes, and he's shown up and she's not packed, and he treats me like I'm a terrible parent for forgetting! He's forgotten her at school a few times, and she's in tears when I get there! And he has the nerve to treat me like I'm a bad mother?!”

“You're not a bad mother,” he told her firmly. “I know what bad mothers are like, and you're not one, darling. You're trying to give her the stability she needs, he shouldn't be swapping his weekends at all. If Beatrice were mine, I'd… well, I'd find the time, darling, which is what he should be doing… but that's beside the point.” He sighed heavily, “You're doing more than your best with her. You're an amazing mother, and Beatrice knows you're doing all you can for her, darling.” Once he wiped the tears from her cheeks, he offered, “I could have a chat with him. Devil to Dan, if you like…”

Chloe sniffled and cuddled into his chest (she was practically in his lap, and he didn't mind in the least), she laughed weakly, “No, Lucifer, it's okay… he just frustrates me sometimes and I can't…” She hugged him tighter and sighed, “Tell me I'm not a bad mother. Tell me I'm making the right choices for her…”

“You are not a bad mother,” he whispered into her hair. “You're doing everything you can for her, my dearest darling, and she knows it, and she loves you for it.” He rubbed her back and held her tighter. “Now relax, love, I'll be here until morning.”

“Stay with me until then?” she asked him, softly, almost as if she were embarrassed to ask him for something he'd so willingly give. “Don't carry me to bed just hold me and stay?” she asked him again.

For the longest moment, he couldn't figure out how to get the words out. He sat there, face buried in her hair, words stuck in his throat, and emotion lodged between that all the way to his heart. Eventually, when she had stopped crying and her breathing had evened out, he whispered, “Anything, darling, all you have to do is ask. I'll make you a star if ask for one…”

He laid down with her on the couch. The only time he left her was to tend to their- _her_ \- her daughter when she had woken up (she had a nightmare, had called him ‘papa' as he quietly entered the room, had cried softly into his shoulder as he rocked her and sang to her until she fell asleep, and she wouldn't until he promised her three times that he would be on the couch in the morning, and for the first time, he had to actively stop himself from breaking one of his Father's greatest laws, because he wanted to rip Daniel Espinoza to shreds for making both of his girls cry). He got the little darling back to sleep and slipped back onto the couch behind the Detective. As soon as he settled, she turned into him and shuffled as close as she could. Her head ended up under his chin, and she was cocooned in his arms. When he finally slept, it was the most restful sleep he'd had in well over a millennia. When he woke, Chloe was still sleeping, cuddled into his chest, but some point in the night, Beatrice had come and snuggled herself between them. He let himself doze. They would wake him when they were ready, for now he was content to be with them in whatever way they let him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION: last chapter there were some things that were different from canon! this chapter is where it starts to veer off quite a bit! last chapter Lucifer never found out that Chloe was a Miracle and he never will in this fic, therefore, things are gonna be wildly different as a result. as noted in the previous chapter, no Miracle revelations, no Candy, and a surprise later on! enjoy!

Lucifer meant business as he walked down the hospital corridor, Amenadiel trailing after him trying to keep up. The Detective had been poisoned and he was the only one who could get the formula for the antidote. Before going through with his plan, he made a quick visit to her hospital room. He wasn't expecting Beatrice to be there, alone and with tears streaming steadily down her face. “Beatrice, dearest heart, what are you doing here all by yourself, darling?” he asked, rushing to her and lifting her into his arms. He hated it when she was upset. He hushed her, brushing her tears away and placing a kiss to her forehead.

“Daddy said he had to go help someone get something to help Mommy…” she sniffled. “He told me to stay here, but Mommy wouldn't wake up and I got scared!” She hugged him around the neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She sobbed a few times and tightened her grip on his suit jacket.

“I'm sorry, dearest heart,” he murmured into her hair. He could feel Amenadiel staring at him, and when he met his brother's eye, the other man was staring at him like he’d never seen him before, like he was wary of this side of Lucifer that he hadn't seen before. He hadn't wanted to tell his brother or mother about the little family he'd made. He turned away from his older brother and comforted the little girl as best he could. When she finally stopped crying, he pulled back from her and asked, “Have you ever met my brother, Amenadiel?” She shook her head ‘no’ as he smoothed her hair out of her face. “Well, he's very boring,” he made a face to get her to giggle, “but he promised to stay here and watch over mum because I have something very important to do so I can help her…”

She sniffled, her chin trembling. “You want me to stay with him?” When he nodded, she asked tearfully, “Where are you going?”

“I'm not going far, dearest heart,” he told her. “I'll still be in the hospital, and when I'm done helping mum, I'll come right back. Right to you, Beatrice. Do you understand?”

She nodded and hugged him one last time, “I understand…”

He settled her back in the chair by her mother's bedside and placed a gentle kiss to her forehead, telling her she was very, very brave and promising that he would help save her mother. He turned back to Amenadiel and told him in a low voice, “Make sure they don't move the Detective. And keep my dau-” he cut himself off and let out a harsh sigh, “keep Beatrice safe.” And then he made himself walk out of the room and away from his Detective and her daughter.

He made quick work of the stairs and when he got to the correct room, he let himself in quietly. Maze and Linda were already preparing so he slipped his suit jacket off and unbuttoned his shirt. He hopped up on the bed, and impatiently waited for them to finish getting ready.

He then, of course, had to take matters into his own hands, quite literally. Hell was exactly as he remembered. Cold, dark, but at the same time so overwhelmingly stifling and hot that for a moment it was difficult to focus. Once he got his bearings, he rushed through the labyrinth examining doors and archways as quickly as he could. He found the door he was looking for in what felt like both minutes and hours at the same time. He was rushing to get the antidote, and as soon as he had the paper in hand, he left the man to his torture. 

He hadn't counted on getting caught in his own torture loop, but then he also hadn't counted on his mother trying to save him from it either. As he pulled her out of the door, he felt himself jolted back into the mortal plane, back into his body. He had a formula to deliver, and a little girl to get back to. He made himself get up and stumble to the elevator; he knew he wouldn't make the stairs in his condition. He almost passed out as he leaned against the wall, waiting for the elevator to deposit him on the Detective's floor, but he made himself stay conscious.

In a daze, he gripped Amenadiel’s shoulder as he passed him, and scanned the room for Beatrice. He had promised her that he would come to her when he was done helping her mother. He relaxed minutely when he saw her on the other side of the room, she was crying again, but not as hard as before, but obviously very scared for her mother. He knelt in front of the little girl and hugged her close as the doctors finally took the Detective out of the room.

He pulled out his phone as he stood with her in his arms and called Daniel and Ella to get them the formula for the antidote. As soon as that was done, he turned all his attention to the little girl in his arms. He hushed her and rubbed her back, like he would after she had a nightmare. “Mum’s going to be fine, dearest heart, I promise,” he whispered into her hair. “Everything's alright now, little love… I'm here, Beatrice, I'm here…”

Once she calmed enough, she fell asleep on his shoulder and he couldn't make himself put her down. When he looked up, Amenadiel was staring at him again, like he was confused at what he was seeing, like he couldn't believe the Devil could comfort anyone, especially a little girl. Lucifer just raised a brow in question at the other man, as if daring him to speak.

“Luci, I thought you hated children. And hugs! Why did you promise this one that you'd be right back?” Amenadiel began loudly, brow furrowed. 

He didn't get to say anything else because Lucifer viciously shushed him. “She's sleeping, brother, don't be so loud,” he said softly. There was a tense silence between them, until Lucifer spoke, “I promised her that I would always be there for her when she needed me. She needed me, so…” There was a long silence between them. “You can't tell mother,” he said suddenly.

“Why not?” Amenadiel asked crossing his arms. He hated keeping secrets from anyone, especially if they were family.

“She's trying to get me to leave,” he sighed. “I don't want her to try to use Beatrice or her mother as ‘motivation’...”

Amenadiel slowly nodded, watching his brother hold this little girl close like she was the most precious thing in the universe to him. They waited there until both Daniel and Ella showed up, telling them that they had given the doctors the cure. They were brought out to the waiting room (where they met up with Linda and Maze) at the insistence of the nurses and offered coffee. All but Lucifer took them up on it, and he knew he was one of the ones that looked like he needed it the most. He had died after all, and he knew he looked worse for wear, but all he could think of was Chloe. At one point, Daniel had tried taking his daughter from Lucifer, but the little girl had refused to let go of him even in her sleep. He didn't mind, and the other man was content to doze in a chair, but Lucifer couldn't relax; he was much too anxious, too worried to relax, so instead he slowly paced the length of the waiting room.

Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, the nurses came and told them that Chloe’s condition was improving drastically. They were going to move her back to her room in a few hours and suggested that everyone go home and get some rest. 

Lucifer knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he saw that the Detective was alright with his own eyes. Daniel and Maze were discussing who was going to take Beatrice home, and he knew that she would be distressed if she found him gone after what had happened earlier that day. He personally thought that Maze should be the one to take her, because she hadn't been the one to leave her alone earlier, but he was too tired to get involved in their discussion. 

He coaxed her awake and kissed her forehead when she opened her eyes. “Is mommy okay?” she yawned as she stretched.

“The doctors say she's doing better, darling, but she's still sleeping,” he told her. “You need to go home and sleep… would you rather go with Maze or your father, love?” he brushed her hair from her face and placed his hand on the side of her face as she stared at him.

“I wanna stay with you,” she told him. 

“Beatrice…” he sighed.

She frowned at him, “You're not going home?” He shook his head, and she frowned deeper. “But you look really tired… Did you get hurt helping mommy?”

Lucifer sighed in frustration and rested his forehead against hers. “I'll be alright. Now, I need you to go and rest, so when you come and see mum tomorrow, you won't be cranky,” he told her with a gentle, teasing smile. 

Her eyes filled with tears and her chin trembled, and he felt his heart shatter because he absolutely hated it when she cried, and now she was crying because he had made her. “I wanna stay with you,” she told him. Tears were streaming steadily down her face and he almost gave in. Almost.

He felt his eyes fill with tears as he turned away from the rest of the group (Linda had seen him, he knew, her expression of surprise at his tears was more than enough proof, and he was more than sure his next session would be filled with talk of Beatrice, which only scared him a little). “I'm sorry, dearest heart. If it were up to me, you'd stay with me always… But you do need to sleep in a bed, and it's been a long day, darling. You can call me, if you need to, little love, I'll always answer…” he told her, wiping her tears away.

“If I can't stay with you then I wanna go with Maze,” she told him loudly and with a pout.

The group of arguing adults, which had grown to include Linda and Ella as mediators, quieted in surprise at her declaration. Lucifer smiled gently at her, “There we are then. Mazikeen will take you home, and you'll come back to see me and mum tomorrow, alright?” When she nodded, he hugged her close once more and promised to see her the next morning.

As soon as Maze left, Daniel and Ella following after her, Linda crowded him. “You really should let one of the nurses check you out,” she whispered. “You were out for a long time…”

“I'll be fine, Doctor…” he sighed. “And thank you.”

He eventually convinced both Linda and Amenadiel to go home and get some rest. Linda by reassuring her about three separate times that he would be fine, and he would be getting some rest at some unspecified point in the semi-near future. Amenadiel was easier; he just asked his brother to check on their mother, who, he was sure, was shaken by what had happened to her in hell.

They had only been gone a few moments, when a nurse came and told him that Chloe had been moved back to her room and that he could see her. She was sleeping, but she was breathing easier and she looked so much better than she had. As soon as the last nurse had closed the door, he was at her side. He placed a tender, lingering kiss to her forehead and took a long moment to breathe her in. When he sat back, he just stared at her. He wanted her to open her eyes, needed to know if they were the same color in this light as they were at the precinct. He needed to know she would be okay, and he wouldn't be able to rest until he saw that she was. 

He wasn't aware of how long he sat at her bedside, wasn't aware of the nurses that kept filtering in and out of the room, checking monitors and such. He did answer his phone when it rang. It was Beatrice, like he knew it would be, so he comforted her over the phone and sang to her until he was sure she was sleeping once again. The moment she opened her eyes, his whole world slotted back into order. “Chloe, darling,” he sighed in relief, cupping her cheek. 

“Hey,” she croaked, and he brought a cup of water to her lips. “You look rough,” she told him after she'd taken a few sips.

He laughed, quite pathetically, more of a sob than anything else, and just watched her for a long moment. “You scared us,” he told her softly. “Beatrice was crying, and I promised her that I'd save you, darling, and… She's with Maze now. She wanted to stay, but they weren't sure when you were going to wake up and I know you don't like it when she's out past her bedtime… She was terrified, and I don't think leaving her with Amenadiel was very helpful-”

“Lucifer,” Chloe cut him off. He just stared at her, until she scooted herself over and pulled on his arm until he fell over onto the bed. He blinked sluggishly, like he couldn't comprehend what was happening to him. “Sleep,” she told him, gently caressing his face, “you're babbling.”

Before he drifted off, he told her, his words slurring with exhaustion, “Glad you didn't die, love, makes one of us…” 

He was asleep before she could ask him what that meant. She let herself doze in and out all morning, but when the door to her room swung open hours later and revealed both Maze and Trixie, she pushed the blanket of sleep away.

“Mommy!” Trixie shouted, causing Lucifer to wake up in a panic, he let loose a shout in a musical language she'd never heard before. Chloe and Trixie watched him try to gather himself together for a moment, but the little girl couldn't hold in her desire to be near her mother any longer. She clambered up into the bed with the two of them and wriggled herself between them. This snapped Lucifer out of wherever his mind had been trapped and his eyes slid halfway closed so he could watch them both. His arm went around the both of them, and he fought off his exhaustion just to be with them.

“Hey, Monkey,” Chloe whispered against her daughter's hair as she held her close. She knew that her daughter wanted to talk to them about something, but she was hesitant to do so in this unfamiliar place. It seemed to weigh heavily on her little girl’s mind, so she asked Maze to find a doctor or a nurse, so they could all go home.

Two hours later, they were all at the apartment. Maze leaving with a large bag and a “glad you didn't die” thrown over her shoulder. The three of them were alone, piled on the couch. Lucifer looked a little worse for wear, but he wouldn't leave them for anything, not even to clean up properly. He sat slouched in the corner of the couch, one leg spread out over the cushions and the other flat-footed on the floor. He'd pulled Chloe to sit between his legs, which turned into her sprawling against his chest along with her daughter. 

Lucifer was dozing lightly when his phone rang, and he groaned but pulled his phone up to his ear. “‘Lo,” he grumbled, wiping the sleep away from his face. There was a short pause over the line. “I'm fine, Doctor,” he sighed. Another pause. “I rested!... I am resting… I'm not at Lux right now… No, you don't need to-... We're fine, Doctor, all of us, yes…” He made eye contact with Chloe and rolled his eyes at the person on the phone. “Doctor…” he said, softly, firmly and then sighed in relief as he was given what he wanted. “Thank you, Doctor Martin!” When he hung up, he did so with a heavy sigh. Both of his arms went around his two girls and he squeezed them tightly just to make them laugh.

“Lucifer?” Trixie sighed.

“Spawn?” Lucifer responded.

She hesitated. “Are you okay? Because Maze said you got hurt helping Mommy yesterday…” she trailed off, like she was afraid to say anything else.

He sighed, and met eyes with Chloe, who was watching him intently. “I'm… I'll be alright, dearest heart,” he told her, not looking at either of them. He'd tell them everything if he did.

“Lucifer,” Chloe said, putting her hand on the side of his face and turning it toward her. He sighed, and let her move him, but he didn't meet her eyes. When she called his name again, he tried to turn his head away, but she didn't let him. “Where?” she demanded. Her tone was stern, she was expecting him to answer. When he didn't move or speak, she lowered her voice and said, “Don't make me find out from Maze…”

“My chest is a bit sore, is all, darling,” he tried to reassure her. She was frowning at him, so he continued, “It's not…” He sighed in frustration and smoothed a stay piece of her hair behind her ear, stroking her cheek as he went. “Don't ask me what happened… I can't… Please, darling…”

Chloe stared at him for the longest time, her eyes never left his face. “Trixie, baby, could you go in your room for a minute?” she asked her daughter.

“Are you gonna yell at him like you yell at Daddy?” she asked, voice small and sad.

“No, Monkey,” Chloe said, her eyes sad. “I'm going to make sure Lucifer’s okay. If he's really hurt, he might not want you to see. Remember what I told you about Lucifer a long time ago?”

As Trixie slipped off the couch she nodded. “That sometimes we have to be very gentle with him because he didn't have a good childhood?” she asked, just to make sure.

When Chloe nodded, Trixie went to her room without any complaints. Chloe sat up and faced him, they didn't speak, but he didn't stop her from unbuttoning his shirt. She frowned when she saw the electrical burns. “Did you have a heart attack or something?” she asked quietly. Lucifer didn't answer, and he still wouldn't meet her gaze. “Lucifer, please,” she begged him.

His eyes snapped to hers, she had tears hanging to her lashes, and she was staring at the burns on his chest like she was scared for him. “Not a heart attack, my dear Detective,” he sighed. He brought his arms around her gently, reverently and hugged her close. She buried her face in his neck and let him hold her. “Only one person knew the antidote, love. That blasted professor… You can guess where he ended up, and I was the only one who could go and get it for you…”

“You said you were glad I didn't die when I woke up,” she said, brow furrowed as she pulled away slightly. “And then you said ‘that makes one of us’...” Her face hardened. “Lucifer what did you do?”

“I did what I had to, darling,” he whispered. “I promised Beatrice that I would save you, that she wouldn't lose you.” He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheek, and said, “It may have been reckless, my darling, but you're much too important to me… If it’s a choice between your life and mine, the choice will always be easy.”

She softened but bit her lip like she was still worried. “You had someone kill you? Was it Maze?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“She was there,” he told her. It didn't answer her first question, so he sighed when she glared at him. “I had to do that bit myself,” he said in a rush, “but! Only because neither of them could do it!”

“You killed yourself?” she asked, voice trembling.

“I didn't want to,” he told her. “I needed to. I had to get to the professor, to get the antidote…” He searched her face, desperately wanting her to understand. “I know you don't believe me when I say that I'm the Devil, Detective, but how can you explain me getting the one thing no one alive and breathing could’ve known?”

She shook her head and buried her face in his neck (she decided to ignore the Devil bit for now, she just couldn’t deal with it on top of everything else). She was still stuck on the fact that he'd killed himself to help save her. “Don't ever do that again! Don't you dare leave us like that! We need you, Lucifer! Trixie needs her papa and I… just… don't you dare leave me…” she trailed off, sniffling much like her daughter the night before.

“Chloe…” he started, but he just hugged her tighter. “I won't, darling, I promise. For as long as you need me, as long as you both need me, I'll be here…”

“Monkey,” Chloe called after she had collected herself. The little girl rushed out of her room and into their arms. She squeezed herself between them and let herself be held. She could see the burns on Lucifer, but he never complained about them being touched. When she looked up at her mother with worry, Chloe soothed her by saying, “He's okay, Monkey. It's not too bad.”

“Barely hurts, my dearest heart,” Lucifer reassured her. 

She snuggled deeper into the both of them. After a long silence she asked, “Do I have to go to Daddy’s tonight? Can I stay here with you and Papa?”

Lucifer hugged them both tighter, while Chloe smiled into her daughter's hair. “I'll call him in a little while and ask if he's okay with it, how does that sound?” she asked, smoothing her daughter’s hair back from her forehead. 

Lucifer let himself doze with his arms around his girls. He was shifting in and out of rest, more focused on them and their safety than his own wellbeing. After a while, he heard them start up a movie, and he felt the Detective maneuver him to lie down. He was out as soon as she and Beatrice had snuggled in around him.

×××

“It's been an emotional week, hasn't it?” Linda asked him, as he sat on the couch.

He briefly met her eyes before looking away towards the window. Quietly, he said, “I s’pose it has, Doctor…”

“A lot happened. Chloe got poisoned, Trixie was very upset about it… you died…” Linda said. She noticed immediately that he looked slightly pained when she mentioned Trixie. He didn't respond, just kept staring in the direction of the window, she could tell he wasn't really seeing what he was looking at. “Let's talk about Trixie,” she suggested.

Lucifer's eyes snapped to hers, wide and slightly alarmed before he remembered who he was talking to. “What about her?” he asked, almost cautious.

“How is she doing? Has she had any nightmares? If she is, are her nightmares affecting you?” she asked gently.

“She seems… She's adjusting… She's happy her mother's alright… She refuses to go to Daniel's house for more than one night in a row. She does have nightmares, but they're not too bad, unless she's away from home,” he sighed heavily and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “She calls me crying… which is… well, frankly, it's heartbreaking…” He stared hard at the table between them, before looking up at her briefly. “The Detective’s taking it hard as well. The both of them only sleep well when I'm with them… They're worried about me, I think...” He sat back and sighed again. “The Detective's running herself ragged; she needs to rest, but she's stubborn.”

“What about you? Have you really slept since the hospital?” Linda asked. He looked completely exhausted, like he would pass out at any moment if he sat still long enough. She was surprised that he was still awake now.

“They need the sleep more than I do, Doctor,” he told her, like it was fact. “Chloe and I are trying to focus on our-” he cut himself off harshly, suddenly, with a frustrated sigh, “her daughter. And I'm trying to make sure the Detective is resting… As soon as they're sleeping better, it will all go back to normal…”

Linda realized, with a great degree of clarity, that the only reason he was being as open as he was, was because he was running on fumes. He was so exhausted, that he would answer any question she threw at him. And he would answer it with one hundred percent honesty, no dancing around the truth or leaving anything out. She had heard his slip up of calling Trixie his, she wanted to ask him why he felt the need to correct himself. But she held back, knowing it would break his trust. “You need to sleep, Lucifer. I agree that they need to sleep better too, but so do you. Just one night not sleeping on Chloe’s couch,” she told him.

He shook his head at her, “I can't. They need me with them. Chloe's terrified that I'm going to end up dead if I'm not with her at the end of the day… Beatrice, the little darling… she's terrified her mother's going to die on her…” He sighed like he had the weight of all his years piled onto his shoulders. “I should've kept her with me that night.”

“What do you mean?” Linda asked. She hadn't meant to, it was her therapist instinct to question this sort of behavior.

“That night at the hospital,” he sighed, “I should've let her stay with me. I shouldn't have sent her off with Maze… She would've woken up with me and her mother and it wouldn't have been so bad. She wouldn't have had that first nightmare…”

“You don't know that,” Linda told him. “You can't know that.” She watched him, saw him frowning. “You need to sleep, Lucifer. Ask Chloe if you can take a nap in her bed after you go to her house. They don't need you to take care of them every second of every day. Take care of yourself first.” When he just stared at her, she added, “The fact that you look ready to fall over and die at any moment might have something to do with Chloe and Trixie’s fear you're going to die on them.”

When he just blinked at her in surprise, she counted it as a win. She ushered him out of her office and encouraged him to sleep once more. 

Lucifer spent most of the day thinking about the Doctor's advice. They were just checking alibis, so it was a light day compared to what they could've been doing. The Detective had decided that they should leave a little earlier than usual, and asked him, as she did every night since her hospital stay, if he would come over. He agreed, as he always did, and he even rode with her in her car because he was positive, he was seeing double. Perhaps Linda was right, and he needed a proper night's rest.

As soon as they walked through the door, Maze packed a bag and left (her smirk telling him it wasn't a bounty she was after that night). Trixie greeted him and when he almost fell over as she hugged him around the middle, he conceded defeat. He let Trixie finish telling them both about her day and sent her off to finish her homework. He stared at the Detective for a long while as she cleaned the kitchen a little. “Darling?” he asked. She hummed in response and he took a deep breath to gather his nerve. He never liked feeling weak. “Would you mind if I… if I took a nap in your bed?” When she stared at him, eyes wide, he rushed to explain. “I just… None of us have gotten much rest since the hospital… and… I'm exhausted, darling. I…” he sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing his face, “Doctor Linda said I should sleep, but you and Beatrice need sleep too, and she told me I needed to recover from what happened to me, but the two of you are more important… I just… I can barely see straight, love. If I sleep, I can help you and Beatrice sleep better. And-”

Chloe cut him off before he could say anything else. “Of course, you can, Lucifer. I'm sorry! We weren't thinking of you! God, you died! And I'm just stopping you from getting better! I'm sorry, you can go back to Lux tonight if you want to!”

He stood and edged his way into her space, trying to get her to look at him. “Chloe, darling,” he said, and her eyes snapped to his as soon as her name left his lips. “There is nowhere else I'd rather be than with you and Beatrice right now.” He raised his brows at her and she nodded, relaxing against him. “Linda suggested that I should sleep properly in a bed, because she thought I hadn't fully recovered and the fact that I looked like I hadn't was making it harder for you and Beatrice to cope… I think that's what she was getting at…” Here, he yawned largely, and Chloe chuckled at him through a yawn of her own. “I need to sleep, so that the both of you can sleep better… I don't mind staying the night, darling, I just need to sleep now, or I won't at all because I'll be worrying about my Deckers.”

Chloe nodded and with a small smile, she said, “Yeah, you look like you're about to fall over.” 

He hugged her close for a long moment, and when he pulled back, he asked her, “You'll wake me for her bedtime?” When she nodded, he trudged up the stairs to the Detective’s room. He shed his jacket, his vest, and his belt before he collapsed sideways on the bed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

When he woke the room was darker and someone was moving his feet up onto the bed. He heard whispering and tried to make himself get out of bed.

“Is Lucifer okay?” Beatrice whispered loudly, causing Lucifer to smile minutely.

“He's just tired, Monkey. Remember how he was hurt?” Chloe asked. There was a short pause as a weight settled next to him on the bed and then she continued, “Well, he never got to rest properly afterwards because he was too worried about us and forgot to worry about himself.”

“So, he's okay, he just needs to sleep?” the little girl asked. Another short pause. “But what about bedtime?”

“He's gonna be up in time for that, baby, I promise,” Chloe said, sounding sad. 

Lucifer was exhausted, and he didn't like that his girls sounded so sad, so he reached for the Detective beside him and pulled her down to lay beside him. She squeaked in surprise and he chuckled along with Trixie. “Bedtime yet?” he managed, his voice low and rough from sleep.

“No, babe,” Chloe told him (and that was new, she'd never called him that before), smoothing his hair away from his forehead. “We didn't mean to wake you, you can sleep another hour.” She made to get up, but he held her tighter.

“Dearest heart,” he yawned, “come have a cuddle…” Trixie scrambled up onto the bed to snuggle between them. With a few laughs and some shuffling around, the three of them managed to find a comfortable position. There were a few moments of hushed breathing, and then Lucifer asked, “H’ve you eaten?”

“We had dinner,” Chloe reassured him, her fingernails lightly scraping his scalp. He relaxed further as she told him that they had been about to watch an episode of _Planet Earth_ to relax before bed.

“Can we all sleep here tonight?” Trixie asked quietly, yawning and snuggling in deeper.

“Of course, we can, Monkey,” Chloe whispered. 

“Good,” the little girl yawned again, “because now I'm too sleepy to move…”

“Then sleep, dearest heart,” Lucifer rumbled. “We're with you tonight, as we always are…”

They all tumbled gently into sleep. Trixie first, and then her mother (who hadn't wanted to fall asleep until her daughter had) and Lucifer directly after. When he woke much later before the light of dawn reached the sky, he was glad that he took Linda’s advice. Nightmares hadn't plagued them through the night, and perhaps, they were all on their way to healing.

(After that night, he didn't spend every night on the Detective’s couch, but he was over most nights of the week. He missed his nights at Chloe’s home, as it had begun to feel more comfortable than the penthouse. Although, he figured it had more to do with the occupants of the apartment than anything else. They'd cut his spending the night down to three days a week, which helped business at Lux, but he still missed his Deckers.)

×××

Lucifer was trying very hard to not blow up at his mother. So far, she hadn't left him alone about lighting the bloody sword, and she was really affecting his mood in other areas of his life. He was trying very hard to light it just to appease her, to get her off his back, but it wasn't working. He had to find a way, or he felt she'd do something drastic. So, he was in a bad mood and whenever he snapped at someone around the Detective (never the Detective herself), she would give him a look and he would do his best to behave. When he'd snapped at two people in the span of 10 minutes (one of them being a very undeserving Miss Lopez), Chloe pulled him aside.

“Seriously, Lucifer, what's going on?” she asked. “You really hurt Ella’s feelings…”

“My mother,” he sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I'll do better, darling. I'm sorry…” She raised a brow at him, and he sighed again, “I'll also apologize to Miss Lopez.” (And he had, which was unpleasant because she hugged him and wouldn't let go for a good two minutes. Although, he supposed the punishment did fit the crime.)

When he and Chloe were in the car later that day, having been to a few suspects’ houses, and the school their victim worked at (she was going to ignore the fact that he bought a children's book about emotions), she gave in to her curiosity and asked him, “What’s your mother bothering you about?”

“She wants me and Amenadiel to go ‘home’ with her and be a family again with all my siblings   
my father,” he almost growled the last part, trying not to bring up the sword. “Amenadiel is buying it, I'm not, my mother's convinced she’s right… She says she won't leave without me...”

“You don't want to go?” she asked quietly, like she was afraid of his answer.

“No. My family, my home is here,” he said, like it was all the reason he needed. He watched from the corner of his eye as she smiled, pleased at his choice. From there, they worked on their theories for the case. Who their suspects were and what their motive could be. They settled on their main suspects for the first round of questioning. 

He hadn't wanted to go back to his penthouse at the end of the day (because he knew his mother would bother him if he did, and he didn't know how much more of her nagging he could take before he snapped) and ended up hanging around the Detective for a while. When she invited him back to hers, he offered to make dinner. He told her he'd follow her in his car. He had a plan and would need the little urchin’s help to pull it off. He was just debating on if he should fill her mother in on it, since it wouldn't strictly be for the case.

In the end, he had asked Chloe what she thought of a “covert, undercover infiltration” of the school by pretending to be interested parents. She had glared at him for suggesting her daughter, but when she thought about it, she figured that it would give them access to another angle on the case that they would probably need later. 

“One of us should take her while the other works another angle,” she said.

“I could take her,” he told her, “you know I'm not one for paperwork, darling…”

She rolled her eyes fondly at him but agreed with him. She was better at sifting through the paperwork, and he was better at ferreting out information without flashing a badge.

So, in the morning, she told her daughter that Lucifer was taking her to a special school. Trixie was excited to be going anywhere with Lucifer, especially if it was in his car.

When they got there, Lucifer told her that if she pretended that her last name was ‘Morningstar' he'd let her have whatever she wanted. She didn't necessarily tell him that she would've done it even if he hadn't offered her whatever she wanted, so she said she wanted two things: to drive his car and he had to cuddle with her and her mom for a whole two movies without complaining. 

So, when she introduced herself, she said her name was Trixie Morningstar and held Lucifer's hand and pretended he was her dad. She knew he was being weird, that he didn't really need to bring her here for the case, but she loved spending time with him.

So, when they all sat in a circle for the emotions class, she climbed into his lap and settled against him. He didn't seem to mind, and she hid her laughter when he raised her hand for her. She told the teacher that she was sad but didn't show it, when she was asked why, she said, “Well… my mom and my papa have a dangerous job… and sometimes they get hurt, so I pretend I'm okay, even though I'm not. My mom got hurt, and my papa did too, but they're both okay now… I still worry a lot…”

Lucifer kissed the side of her head and hugged her tightly. He whispered, “Welcome to the world of parental deceit, dearest heart… But you do know that me and mum are all better? That we keep each other safe?” She nodded, and then turned to hug him. “You don't have to always be brave, little love…” he told her. He then asked the teacher how to use that as a weapon while still hugging her close, which made Trixie giggle, but then the teacher was no help. Trixie was laughing silently by the time her mom interrupted the class in the middle of him finding out a child was drawing his mother stabbing Debbie, their victim. Which he immediately told her when she spoke up. She told him that they needed to get Trixie to her current school, and when they made their way towards the lobby, Chloe asked Trixie if that's how she really felt, and told her that she could always talk to the both of them.

Trixie was glad that she had her mom and Lucifer, and that they both wanted to make sure she was okay before they started working on their case. “I know, Mom,” she replied. And then she asked if she could ride with Lucifer. However, Chloe told them both no to Trixie’s driving lesson, and made them both promise that they would wait until Trixie was a teenager. Trixie sighed heavily, at least she still got two movies out of him.

×××

Their latest case brought them to the “loony bin” as Lucifer had jokingly dubbed it. He, of course, hadn't expected his dad to be there. As a patient. He, therefore, hadn't really been expecting to check himself in. He would have to tell the Detective that he was going to be unavailable, which meant that he would have to call Beatrice every night. Hopefully he could convince them to give him phone privileges. With his phone. That he would sneak in, so he could call Beatrice every night like he would have to promise her and her mother.

So here he was, checking himself into the “loony bin” and threatening the man in the front window. He didn't take into account that they would be contacting his next of kin (and he had appointed that particular honor to the Detective) and that she would demand to talk to him immediately. So here he was, being supervised while talking to his Detective on the phone (which he had been made to put on speaker).

“Lucifer… just… I don't understand,” she implored him, sounding extremely stressed and confused.

He looked at the doctor standing next to him (he been called to work from home when Chloe had made a scene over the phone and threatened the facility with a warrant and a lockdown of some sort and all because they wouldn't let her talk to him immediately) and turned away for some semblance of privacy. “My dearest darling,” he sighed, letting her know so much just from those few words and that sigh, “come by tomorrow, I'll tell you what you need to know then… I promise you, I'm alright…”

“What about Trixie? Her nightmares have been… pretty bad…” she trailed off. He could hear the strain in her voice, knew she was holding back tears. Trixie had been having very confusing nightmares, a mixture of her mother's poisoning and Malcolm chasing after her. But only this week, it seemed. Some were better than others and her counselor had said that would happen, that it was normal. They were just worried for their- her daughter.

He heard the Doctor start scribbling but tried to ignore it. “I'll find a way, darling.” She started, but he cut her off gently. “Detective, I promise you, it'll be alright. Come have a chat tomorrow, dearest…”

She sighed and agreed to come and see him tomorrow. He relaxed back in his seat and dragged a hand down his face. This plan wasn't his best ever, but he'd have to follow through with it now.

“Who's 'Trixie’?” the doctor asked him, making Lucifer half snap out of his thoughts.

“The Detective's daughter,” he replied absently. He stood and turned with a raised brow when he realized what the man had asked. “Why do you ask?”

The doctor shrugged. “Just wondering why it was such a big deal that you're not there. You're not the father, I'm guessing…”

Lucifer's eyes narrowed. “No,” he replied, “which is none of your business…”

The doctor raised his hands up in surrender and showed Lucifer into his room. Lucifer spent the night thinking about what exactly he would tell her. He didn't want to lie, not to either of them. With much deliberation and with a little bit of blame toward his father (well, more than a little bit), he decided to tell them as close to the truth as he could get.

When morning came, it brought the Detective and Beatrice with it. First thing and against visitors’ policy (children weren’t really allowed without permission and at least a consultation beforehand, and, of course, visiting hours weren’t until later in the day). This, of course, meant that his 'father’ had seen him with Chloe and her daughter. Had seen him, along with the doctor from the night before, scoop the little girl into his arms and place a gentle kiss to her forehead. They had seen him settle the little girl against his hip and lean into the Detective to greet her with a soft kiss to her cheek. She crowded him, pressing herself into him so she could stroke his brow reassuringly, and he forgot all about the people watching him until she pulled away (and he almost whined when she did, which was surprising to him).

The doctor from the night before was across the room, paying attention to another patient who was trying their damndest to eat an entire stick of Elmer’s glue (thank Dad for small favors). So, Lucifer took the time to let them know that he did have his cell phone and they could call him whenever they needed to. No matter what time. And that he was fine, he promised, but had wanted to find more out about God Johnson. Chloe looked at him worriedly, and when they were about to leave, she wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly. “Take care of yourself and be careful, babe,” she whispered to him (which still made his skin start buzzing, her calling him 'babe’ like that… it happened so infrequently that he felt like it would always make his heart jump every single time). 

He hugged her back and told her that he thought he might be able to help with the case from the inside. She held him tighter in response and buried her nose in his neck as if she were breathing him in. “I'll do my very best to be careful, darling,” he whispered into her hair.

He felt her nod against him as she pulled away. He allowed himself to smooth Beatrice's hair back from her face just once as she looked up at him. He offered them each a small, sad smile as they left, and ignored his father standing next to him for as long as he could. “What?” he asked harshly.

“Nice family you have there, Samael,” God told him pleasantly.

“Don't,” Lucifer growled. “Don't talk about them. And don't you dare call me that!”

God just raised his hands in surrender and smiled pleasantly. Lucifer sighed heavily, wishing with all his heart that they had let him keep his flask. If they’d let him mix his meds with alcohol, then he wouldn’t find this place so unbearable. All he wanted now was to be with the Detective and Beatrice, which was confusing to him. He’d just seen them and now he wanted them back. Human emotions were unnecessarily confusing, and he really didn’t see the point in having them, although, they were pleasant sometimes… When he was with the little family he’d made, he felt good. He didn’t quite know what the exact emotions he felt were, but he knew that they made him feel warm and good and he would smile for hours afterwards. Which was confusing sometimes, but ultimately it was because of his Deckers, so he just accepted it. 

He was pulled out of his musings as his father clasped him on the shoulder. “Come, my son. They serve breakfast in five minutes,” The man other man smiled serenely, and Lucifer sighed heavily as if he were weighed down by more than just his thoughts. 

Days later, after he and his ‘father’ had been saved by the Detective, he was standing in front of Earl Johnson and telling him that he’d never be able to make peace with his real father. Earl nodded, somewhat understanding, and told him that at least he had a wife and child that loved him. 

Lucifer just stared at him in confusion, not quite catching on that Mr. Johnson thought that Chloe and Beatrice Decker were his. At least, not until Beatrice hopped out of the car that had just pulled up beside them and Earl smiled knowingly at him as the little girl practically jumped into Lucifer’s arms. Chloe wasn’t far behind her daughter, although her approach and embrace were much gentler. Lucifer was lost in thought for most of the ride home, and he could tell that Chloe knew. She had insisted that he stay the night with them, and he’d missed them, so of course he agreed. Beatrice commanded most of his attention as they walked through the door and he tried to make up for the time he’d missed over the last few days but felt like it was something he’d never really be able to accomplish. So, he put his all into their night together, even though all he really wanted to do was cuddle with the two of them and watch mindless television. 

He made them dinner and helped Beatrice with her homework and made sure he was everything they usually needed from him. There was a moment when Beatrice turned away and he accidentally let how tired and worn out he was show. He hadn’t known that Chloe had seen until she came up behind him a few minutes later and hugged him from behind. He relaxed in her arms after a slightly tense moment and turned his head to catch her eyes with a soft smile. “What’s the matter, darling?” he whispered.

“Why didn’t you say that you were tired, Lucifer? We could’ve ordered something, and you could’ve taken a nap instead of helping Trixie with her homework…” she told him, squeezing him tighter. “You don’t always have to take care of us, babe, we can take care of you too…”

His breath caught again as she called him ‘babe’ which he knew now he’d never, ever get used to hearing. “I… You were already worried about me, darling. I didn’t want you to worry any more than that,” he bit the inside of his cheek, deep in thought. He clasped one of her hands in one of his, his thumb stroking her knuckles, and told her, softly and vulnerable, “I didn’t want to let either of you down again like I did earlier this week… I know that the phone calls helped her, but I should’ve been here with the two of you… Not locked in the loony bin…”

He felt Chloe bury her face in between his shoulder blades for a moment as she sighed against him. He shut his eyes tightly, waiting to be reprimanded for abandoning them. “Lucifer…” she began, “you didn’t let us down. We were just worried about you, okay?”

His brow furrowed, and he shifted the both of them so that she was pressed into his side. He studied her face closely for the truth and found it there like he always did. It sat there, woven into her features as if she were the most beautiful silk tapestry in all of existence. He placed a kiss to her forehead in acceptance, but only allowed her to push him into one of her dining room chairs after he’d put the finishing touches on dinner. 

The three of them spent the rest of the night on the couch until they both went to put Beatrice to bed. She demanded that he read her two chapters of the third _Harry Potter,_ but she could only stay up through one and a half. Chloe led him back over to the couch and practically bullied him into cuddling with her (which involved a lot of her pushing him until he was half reclining against the arm of the couch and she was practically in his lap). He felt her relax against him completely and found that he really didn’t want to leave either of them like that ever again. She tucked her head under his chin and he smiled. With his guard down, he told her that Earl Johnson had thought that they’d been married, and that Beatrice was actually his. Unbeknownst to him, Chloe smiled and thought to herself that maybe one day they could be his like that. Outwardly, she huffed a laugh and told him that Trixie had definitely started looking like him, “Especially since she picked up that ridiculously adorable head tilt you do when you’re confused.”

He was indignant for a moment (“I’ve never once in my entire existence been ‘adorable,’ Detective!”) before they settled into teasing each other for a long, long while. Eventually, they fell asleep in each other’s embrace, finally completely relaxing with each other after their long few days apart.

×××

Lucifer had lit the sword for his mother, but they were still missing a piece (and he’d decided after he saw his mother eyeing the blade, to keep the blade stashed in his corvette so she couldn’t find it). Lucifer didn't particularly care if they found it and left that bit to Amenadiel and his mother. He was much too preoccupied with the fact that Chloe kept giving him shy, gentle smiles. And the fact that she kept touching him whenever she got the chance. They weren't sexual touches, which was what was confusing to him. So, he had a session with Linda. Which wasn't as helpful as it should've been, in his opinion.

Now here he was, his mother calling him while he was on his way into the precinct. With a sigh he answered the phone. “Mum, this really isn't a good time,” he told her, as soon as he had the phone to his ear.

“Lucifer, we need you and your Detective,” she started, ignoring him completely. “There's been a murder.”

“A murder? Did you kill a human, Mum?” He rolled his eyes heavenward, as if asking for patience or, rather, waiting for his father to smite his mother (her physical shell, at least) off the face of the earth for killing one of his precious humans.

“No, I didn't,” she sounded long suffering and annoyed. “We were getting the piece, you know, the one you don't think we need, and one of these humans shot the one we needed!” She was annoyed, he could tell, and she sounded more upset that she didn't get what she needed than about the dead person. Which was quite on point for his mother.

He took a deep breath and summoned all the patience he had as he pulled into the precinct parking garage. Sighing heavily, he asked, “Where, Mum?”

“Well, he's on the floor,” she replied.

“Address, Mum, I need an address,” he rubbed at the bridge of his nose and as soon as he entered the precinct, he saw the Detective and relaxed minutely. 

She saw him and waved him over. He hurried over to her desk and used a scrap of paper to scribble down the address his mother was giving him. “Yes, Mum… Yes, Mum…” he sighed and rolled his eyes at the Detective as she placed a hand against his stomach. Which was something she’d been doing recently, and he was one hundred percent on board with it. As long as she was touching him, he was perfectly alright. “Mum, I’ll see what we can do…” he said as he placed a hand over the one the Detective had placed on his stomach. “No, Mum, I can’t guarantee anything…”

His attention was snatched completely away from the Detective when his mother said loud enough for the Detective to hear as she stood next to him, “Then what use are you to me?” He pulled the phone away from his face and frowned when she hung up (and he didn’t see Chloe frown at the phone in his hand like she was very unhappy with it).

He sighed. “Detective, would you mind terribly if we checked out this location? My mum is convinced that there was a murder committed there,” he said, like he really rather wouldn’t.

“Yeah, sure,” she told him with a gentle smile. “She was just on the phone with you, right?” she asked like she was having and extremely pleasant conversation. He nodded, confused, and she nodded right back. “I’m going to slap her when we get there for saying that to you,” she said completely serious. And she grabbed her keys, so they could be on their way.

Lucifer panicked a little and instead of giving her a multitude of reasons why she shouldn’t, he managed a slightly strangled, “Please don’t…” 

She turned to him with a furrowed brow and tilted her head. “Lucifer, you can’t let her talk to you like that…” she told him, placing a hand on his arm. “You know that’s not true, don’t you?” she asked him gently.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes as he messed with his cufflinks. “Just… Detective, it’s not…” he huffed in frustration. “Darling, she’s my mother and she’s… particular about what should be done and when. Nothing to get worked up over.” 

Chloe stared at him, her head tilted, and after a short tense pause said, “But you know that you don’t need to be useful for someone to want you around right?” When he just stared at her like he couldn’t understand quite what she meant, like this concept was so strange he just couldn’t comprehend it, she sighed out a long breath and linked their hands as she led him out to the parking garage. “We’re going to have a long talk about this later, okay? You, me, and Trix.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer, she just unlocked the car and climbed in waiting for him to catch up. They drove to the hotel that his mother and Amenadiel were standing outside of and parked. Chloe was looking around for someone, and it occurred to him that perhaps she shouldn’t have referred to the other woman as ‘Mum’ in front of the Detective. But, he decided, he’d made the mistake already, there was no harm in making it again. As they stepped out of the car Lucifer greeted his two family members. “Brother, Mum, where’s the body?” he asked, trying to get them all away from the situation as quickly as he could.

He saw Chloe visibly pause at the new information she received, and his mother glared at him like she wanted to whack him over the head with something heavy. Amenadiel just sighed deeply and motioned for them to follow him, which they did. And they definitely had a dead body on their hands. Which made their day a little more interesting, but a bit more perilous at the same time, because his mother was involved and that was just… not great. So Lucifer had to make sure that the Detective was never alone with his mother while they waited for the forensic team, which meant he had to be around his mother for an extended period of time. Mum kept letting passive aggressive statements fly out of her mouth and Lucifer just kept absorbing them. There were a few extremely pointed remarks about him not being a good son like Amenadiel was and how helpful the older man had been to her the past few weeks. Which Lucifer took in stride, with only a small wince. He knew that Chloe had noticed, had wanted to say something, but he shook his head at her. 

Chloe had looked like she was going to do whatever she wanted until she grabbed Amenadiel’s arm and dragged him off to talk to him. After a moment of Amenadiel staring at her warily, she asked him, “Does she always talk to him like that? Does she talk to you like that?”

Amenadiel cleared his throat and said, softly, almost guiltily, “She’s never really talked to me like that before. Only once really. But it is regular with Lucifer…” He looked up at her to find her frowning with her fists clenched. 

“It shouldn’t be,” she told him in a furious whisper. “Mothers don’t treat their kids like that, no matter what.” She shook her head and looked back toward Lucifer. He was standing next to his mother as she talked to him, but he wasn’t listening to her. He was staring in Chloe’s direction, but he wasn’t really seeing her. His forehead was creased, and he seemed to be chewing at the inside of his lip. Both of those things were out of character for Lucifer. It just made Chloe more concerned for him. 

As soon as the other officers and the forensics team arrived she set Charlotte Richards and Amenadiel to be interviewed by uniformed officers and managed to pull Lucifer away from his mother. He didn’t look any more relaxed until Chloe pulled him off to the side and placed her hand on his chest and slid it down until it was on his stomach. His shoulders loosened, and he breathed out a huge sigh. Chloe crowded into his space and asked him softly, “You want to come and spend the night?”

He offered her a smile and said, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be the best company tonight, darling…” His smile was self-deprecating and small, which was unacceptable in Chloe’s book. 

“That’s okay,” Chloe told him. “We can order out and just goof off, you know? Watch mindless movies, things like that…” When Lucifer just gave her a small nervous nod, she gave him a small smile and pulled him back towards the crime scene where Ella was pulling a phone out from under a large cabinet.

And then of course, to distract himself and everyone else, he latched onto the picture of ‘boobs’ that wasn’t really boobs. Chloe let him have his distraction, and as they gathered more evidence. He was being ridiculous until they actually figured out that it was actually a record label manufactured for Chez Ruiz and only Chez Ruiz. Who was just terrible at what he was doing. Or trying to do. 

They found out about the party that was being held by Chez’s mother from Charlotte Richards (and the fact that she was Lucifer’s mother was really just… it was weird and explained so much about why he was always so weird around the other woman) and that it was tomorrow. So she and Lucifer could go back to hers, and the fact that it looked like he was trying to sneak away from his mother was just making Chloe angrier with the older woman. Not that she was that much older, and Chloe decided that she was Lucifer’s step mother, which only kind of made sense.

She led Lucifer to her car and ushered him into it. As soon as they left the precinct garage, Lucifer’s shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t noticed how tense he’d been until now. She didn’t know if her version of a relaxing night was like his version, but she had been noticing a certain reluctance on his part to go to his club on the nights he was with them. She let the silence between them grow, but it was comfortable, like he was absorbing her energy, trying to rid himself of stress by just being around her. She just smiled at him and placed a hand on his forearm as she drove. Her smile grew as he covered her had with his other one. He tried apologizing for his mother and how she was behaving, but she brushed it away. She wanted to tell him that he never needed to apologize for anyone like her, but she could tell that all he wanted now was a hug from Trixie and maybe some Chinese takeout. At least she wanted Chinese takeout.

They pulled up to the apartment and Chloe laughed softly as Lucifer hurried to the front door. She was right behind him as he swung it open, and her little girl shouting, “Lucifer!” made her smile widen, but the way Lucifer scooped ‘the little urchin’ up into his arms made her grin. He hugged her tightly, and Trixie seemed to sense Lucifer’s mood because she didn’t let go until he did. (Chloe paid the sitter and just stood there for a moment watching them hug. Something Lucifer wouldn’t have done before. He would’ve complained.).

“So, how do we feel about Chinese for dinner?” Chloe asked if she was hungry, she knew Lucifer must be doubly so because he hadn’t even bothered to pick at the lunch that Ella had someone bring them. And it had been good too. Lucifer and Trixie agreed, and Chloe sent them to either cuddle on the couch or make a pillow fort. And Chloe found them after she’d gotten off the phone, all cuddled together on the couch with Trixie in his lap. Her daughter had tucked a blanket around him and cuddled into his lap. With a smile, Chloe wriggled under the blanket with him and smiled gently as he lifted an arm for her to cuddle under. She asked Trixie about her day and they were rewarded with silly stories from her class, and one instance of bully prevention as Chloe liked to call it. 

Soon, their dinner arrived, and Lucifer made to get up, but Chloe told him not to move. She wanted him to relax, to be taken care of, and she knew he didn’t think he deserved it, but she wanted to show him that he did. That it was okay to be weak and soft and he was like that sometimes, he really was, but he always seemed to hold back. And that was fine, she knew it would take him time, but she wished that it was something he didn’t have to work on. That his family wasn’t the way they were. That he’d been taught that he could be fragile and soft with the people he cared about.

Their night was quiet and seemed to be exactly what Lucifer needed, because after they put Trixie to bed he smiled at her and Trixie as she kissed her daughter’s forehead so tenderly that she had to wipe her eyes before she cornered him on the couch again. And she did corner him. She made sure that he was going to come back to the apartment with ger the next night, so she could go undercover to the tequila party their suspect was going to be attending. He agreed but he looked like he was worried about something, probably his mother. And then, he recommend that Amenadiel could help her find out what his mother was trying to buy, if it was illegal, or actually harmless like she said it was. 

She gave him a fond smile and asked if he’d like to stay the night. She could see that he wanted to, that he perhaps even needed to, but she wasn’t sure if he was going to. She wanted to give him a choice. But he did want to stay, so uncharacteristically she gave him another choice. “Do you want to sleep on the couch, or upstairs with me?” she asked him gently.

“Oh, Detective,” he began a clearly fake smirk sprouted on his face. “I didn’t know you were interested…”

Chloe gave him a sad smile and shook her head. “Lucifer, babe,” she said, soft and gentle, and she watched his expression soften, “do you want to sleep upstairs with me?”

He looked at her, his face slack and his eyes begging her to understand him, to hear what he couldn’t say, so, she offered him her hand and led him up the stairs. They had never slept in the same bed without Trixie between them, and they were each a bit nervous. Chloe just rolled her eyes at him as he lingered by the bed with his suit jacket still on. She ducked into her bathroom to change into her pajamas and when she came back, he had shed his suit jacket, belt, and shoes but he was still standing beside the bed like he wasn’t sure what to do. She rolled her eyes as she got into bed and patted the spot next to her as she settled. Nervously, he pulled the covers back and slipped into bed next to her. When they were settled on opposite sides of the bed, they laid there for a few moments. 

Chloe took a deep breath and slipped closer to him. She touched his arm hesitantly and then all at once he pulled her to him. He buried his face in her hair and clutched her to him with a quiet desperation. It was like he was trying to take comfort from her, so she gave it to him. She held him as close as he was holding her and when she was on the verge of sleep, she felt him relax against her.

The next morning she was awoken by Trixie climbing into bed with them. She was about to fall back to sleep when she heard Lucifer rumble a ‘good morning’ and she felt him shift. He shifted to put his arm around the little girl. She listened to them talk with a softness she had come to know when she watched them together. They were talking about a dream Trixie had and for once, it wasn’t a bad one which was a relief for the two adults, but it was a weird one. Chloe was tired and happy, much happier than yesterday. She hoped that Lucifer was feeling better after yesterday, but she knew that today he would be extremely stressed. So, as she listened to her little family talk about strange dreams and breakfast plans, she made a decision. She just hoped that it would help him.

After they made their way to the precinct and argued about who was going to attend the party, it was decided that Chloe would attend, just like she’d hoped it would go this morning. Which gave her the perfect opportunity to ask Lucifer to watch Trixie for her that night. He wasn’t happy about it, but he promised that he would watch her. So she and Lucifer headed to her apartment, with a short stop off to buy a dress after his mother’s quip about pajama parties. She hadn’t let Lucifer see the one she chose, had wanted him to be surprised as she finished getting ready and he’d gotten back from picking Trixie up from school. 

She heard them come inside and put the finishing touches on her make up. She exited her room and then she entered the kitchen. Trixie’s eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “Mommy, you look so pretty!” 

Which made Lucifer spin around quickly. His jaw went slack, and he stared at her like she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, which was unbelievable to her. “You look beautiful, darling…” he told her, his voice was filled with awe and something more, something she… something she wanted, but didn’t know if it was hers to take. 

She smiled at him and dipped her head. “Thank you,” she gave him a gentle smirk. When she turned to her daughter, she was grinning openly at the two of them. “Be good for Lucifer, okay, Monkey? And don’t stay up too late, okay?” She turned to Lucifer and sighed as his eyes lingered along her legs. She tried not to smirk as he brought his eyes back to hers and looked sheepish as his eyes came back to hers. “Lucifer, don’t leave, okay? I’ll be back soon, and I’ll make sure that nothing happens.” She spoke softly to him and crowded his space. “I’ll make sure your mother behaves, okay?” she said, with a small, teasing smile. 

When his smile fell, he nodded worriedly. “Just… be careful?” he said, he slipped his hand into hers and traced her fingers lightly (she fought a shiver but wasn’t successful). “She’s… just don’t… darling, please, don’t…”

She placed a hand on the side of his face and he leaned into the contact. “I’ll be careful… I know she’s your mother, but I don’t trust her,” Chloe told him.

“Good,” Lucifer replied. “Now, you’re going to be late, Detective.”

He watched her say goodbye to her daughter but then she stopped at the door and gave him a reassuring smile. He stared after her and sighed. He wanted to be with her, he wanted to protect her from his mother, from what his mother could do. If she found out how much he cared for the Detective and their- _her_ \- her spawn (and really, how could he ever think that she would allow that? How could she ever give him anything like that, like they belonged to him? They didn’t of course, and he was, as always, trying not to think of them that way, he knew they weren’t his, but, by his father, he was theirs and he always would be…). But Beatrice called for his attention, and he had to look away from the door. 

His attention was split, and he hated that he wasn’t fully present for Beatrice. So when she had to call his attention back to her for the third time, he made himself focus on her. He was overly cheerful, he knew, and Beatrice gave him a look on his first attempt at it. She cornered him on the couch and climbed onto him; she asked, “Are you sad, Lucifer?”

He sighed deeply and told her, “Just worried, dearest heart.” At her terrified expression, he clarified, “Not for your mother, darling, she’s safe as she can be. My mother, on the other hand… well…” He sighed deeply and accepted her hug when she gave it to him. 

“Your mom is in trouble?” she asked. She was worried, he could tell that she was. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t like that she was. 

“No, dearest heart,” he told her, resting his forehead against hers. “She’s… she’s just difficult sometimes. She likes to have her way…” 

Trixie hugged him tighter and said, like she thought she’d get in trouble for it, “Mommy told me that when you were little, like me, you were… your parents… that they weren’t nice to you…”

Lucifer gaped, not noticeably but long enough for Beatrice to look like she regretted asking, like she was afraid he was going to be angry at her for asking him a question like that. So he tried to gather his wits. “Beatrice… why would you like to know, darling… I… it doesn’t matter…” he tried. But Beatrice, his dearest heart, stared at him with those eyes of hers. “I’m not…”

“But you…” and she bit her lip, looking very much like her mother, “It _is_ important, papa…to me and to mom…”

He stared at her like he was baffled by that, by someone caring for him (and he was, he didn’t know mattering to someone was like this, and yes, he knew that Chloe and Beatrice needed him, but to matter to them… he was… it was… unusual). “I…” he began, “I suppose… they weren’t very nice at all…” 

“D-did they hurt you? Or were they just mean?” she whispered, hugging him tighter, lying her head on his shoulder. “Mommy said she didn’t know when I asked her…”

Lucifer just stammered about for a moment, but before she could ask if he was okay and tell him that he didn’t have to answer, he asked what she would like for dinner. “Anything you’d like, Beatrice, anything at all, you know I could, darling,” he smirked at her, and she offered him a small smile that almost reached her eyes. She insisted on soup and goldfish crackers, and he knew then that he made her sad (because she only ever wanted soup when she’d had a bad day or was sad or sick, and he knew she wasn’t sick, and she’d already told him her day was ‘good’). He should’ve just answered her question, and the thought that he’d disappointed her like Dan would have just… it didn’t feel great… So, Lucifer made her soup and goldfish crackers, and he kissed her hair as he placed it in front of her and made her smile with jokes and silly faces, that he would never say or make in front of anyone else, not even the Detective.

And when dinner was finished, they sat on the couch together, or at least, they were going to, but Lucifer stopped her before she could climb on. “Dearest heart…” he started. “I’m sorry for earlier, Beatrice. I shouldn’t have done that to you… and… to answer your question, dearest heart-”

Trixie cut him off, teary eyed and bottom lip trembling, “It’s okay, Lucifer… I know that they… You didn’t want to answer so I guess they really did hurt you.” And tears started streaming silently down her cheeks and Lucifer became alarmed because when children cry, they make noise, or so he’s learned, and her voice had just grown thicker, but there are tears and- “and,” she continued, “I’m sorry I made you think about it, and, and made you sad…”

His entire face went slack with shock. “Dearest heart… no, my darling Beatrice,” he said softly, yet fiercely. “Don’t ever… don’t apologize to me for asking a question, alright?” When she nodded, he hugged her close and he missed the Detective as she walked through the door. “Yes, they did, but not in the beginning… and my mother never… she’s just never been very…”

“Nice?” Beatrice supplied, and Lucifer nodded his agreement. “I’m still sorry that I made you sad…”

“That’s quite alright, spawn,” he told her, making her giggle through the tears running down her cheeks. And he supposed that it was just a human thing, silently leaking from their eyes. They’d been so occupied with each other, with their conversation, that they hadn’t heard Chloe enter.

“Hey, guys,” Chloe said, trying not to interrupt. She sank onto the couch next to him and sighed and she leaned into his side. “What’s the matter, Monkey?” she asked, when she noticed her daughter’s tears.

“I made Lucifer sad,” she said.

But Lucifer was quick to correct her, “Not on purpose, dearest heart.” He wiped the tears off of Beatrice’s cheeks and placed a kiss to her forehead, reassuring her that he wasn’t upset, and probably never would be, not at her. 

As Chloe went to change (and he really wished he’d been able to see more of that dress, because it really was a work of art on her, and he was trying to think of ways to make her wear it again), he sent Beatrice off to take a bath and get ready for bed. Chloe came back down the stairs and made a beeline for him. She hugged him, and he let himself relax against her, although he wasn’t quite sure why he was being hugged in the first place. Beatrice hugging him could be random (to him, at least) and the Detective always seemed to have a reason, although just now it seemed that she was adopting her daughter’s strategy. Which was fine with him. He enjoyed it whenever the Detective decided to touch him. 

“Your mom told me a little bit about your family,” she told him. When he didn’t respond with more than an interrogative sound in his throat, she added, “That your dad was kind of a tyrant, treated you all badly… She kept saying that being with him was torture…” she pulled back just a little to look him in the eyes and asked, “Was it really that bad?”

He shifted uncomfortably, and said, “I can’t attest to her experiences, Detective… I can only be sure of my own.”

“And since you have a crazy good memory, you remember everything you’ve ever experienced,” she said. She wasn’t asking for confirmation or anything further, so he just gave her a curt nod. She got the message, that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, but she had to ask him, “Do you want me to tell Trix not to ask you questions about your childhood?”

“Of course not,” he said with a furrow in his brow. “She can ask me anything, and I’ll do my best to answer it…” Here, he paused, somewhat unsure, “The same goes for you, my dearest darling.”

She smiled at him, and kept smiling at him, even as they were putting Beatrice to bed. She was smiling at his as she showed him to the door, and she placed one of her sweet, gentle kisses on his cheek as he was leaving. She thanked him, and he told her to never thank him for watching their- _her_ \- her daughter. She just smiled softly at him again and wished him good night (“Text me when you get home, okay? I want to know you got there safe. And don’t forget about the set up tomorrow, alright?”).

So when he got to his penthouse, he was texting the Detective a quick message (“I’m home, darling, sweet dreams…”) when he was accosted by his shouting mother. She was going on about the set up and how he better be there and not let her down again. He just wanted to lie in bed and text his Detective, and even though it was fairly early in the night he felt exhausted. But he couldn’t throw his mother out no matter how much he wanted to, because then he would have to hear it from her and Amenadiel. Though, his brother had been more understanding ever since he had met Beatrice. 

An hour and a half later, his mum left, only a little less angry and just a bit more annoyed with him than she really should’ve been. At least they had hammered out a plan so that she and Amenadiel could get the artifact. He checked his phone and saw that Chloe had texted him back. That made him smile and he decided that he needed a long shower and before bed, and that he needed an early night (though texting her would have to be left out of his plans, and he was just a bit bummed about that particular bit).

When he arrived at the precinct the next morning, his mother was already there along with the Detective. And he was hesitant to greet the Detective in the usual way (a kiss to the cheek and a soft ‘good morning, darling’) because of his mother hanging around. He could feel Chloe frowning at him and he was aching to go to her, to be close to her, but the threat of his mother so close… he didn’t want to bring attention to the Detective. But as the day progressed, the more his mother hung around and practically hounded him all day long. He wanted nothing more than just a moment, just one, a caress of a hand, the touch of a finger, anything to reassure her that he was still with her, that there was nothing wrong. Because sometimes he knew what she was thinking, and the expression on her face whenever she looked at him today was just… hurt and confusion. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her, it was him, him and his stupid mother. (Chloe had asked him at one point, in front of his mother, what was wrong, and why was he acting so distant, and he’d had to reply with just the word “nothing” and he could tell that Chloe was confused and the fact that he hadn’t called her ‘darling’ at all yet had hurt her.)

So as soon as Charlotte Richard’s had left to go to the setup with Chloe and Lucifer in the van, he took his chance. Or rather, Chloe took it for him. “Okay, what’s going on with you? You were fine last night! Better than fine, even,” she started.

Before she could get any further, he cupped her cheek in one of his hands and placed a tender kiss to the apple of her other one. “My dearest darling,” he said in his softest, tenderest register. “You mean the world to me… but… my mother is…”

“Particular?” she scoffed, “What, she doesn’t want you around me or something?”

“Dangerous,” he finished on a pained sigh. And Chloe rolled her eyes, but he said, “Chloe," and she's immediately at attention because even though 'darling' is regular that... that never will be. "Please, just... please," and he's not one to beg, never has been. So, she took him seriously, told him that yes, she will be careful, but she will not change her behavior around him, because she needed him to know that he’s important to her. He nodded but looked worried as she's come to expect when he's around his mother. Just then they get their first indication that his mother was in her meeting, and they have to focus their attention elsewhere. Although, Lucifer stuck close to her, he’s always touching her, whether it be her arm, her shoulder, or her legs (and he slid his calf along hers, at one point, and relished in the fact that she took off one of her shoes to caress his calf with her toes, and really just the fact that they’re almost playing footsie was… he had to back away before his imagination ran away from him, but Chloe didn’t let him go far). So when it was time to interfere with the situation, Chloe and Lucifer were practically attached to each other as they made their way to their arrest. 

Lucifer did, of course, get the key before the Detective could search his mother. Which his mother was happy about, and he really hoped that she would leave him alone for at least a week. All he wanted now, was to go home with the Detective and do something dreadfully boring like watch a movie or just talk with his Deckers. 

As soon as he could he sent his mother home with the key, and he spent the rest of the evening sticking closely to the Detective. Ever since their moment in the stakeout van, he’d been unable to keep to his own space. He wasn’t trying to crowd her, but he was in her space although she didn’t seem to mind. She was lingering near him just as much as he was in hers. In fact, she was touching him a great deal more than she normally would be. 

When they finally got away from the crime scene and into the car, it was like all the stresses in their lives fell away. Lucifer made an aborted movement with his arm but thought better of it. Perhaps his… absentness today had lost him the liberty of touching her, even if she hadn’t protested him being in her space. So, he aborted the movement and set his arm onto his lap like he’d been adjusting his arm. He didn’t see her move, but he did feel her touch him. She placed her hand on his arm and let her hand travel down to his hand. He stared at it in awe, but he couldn’t stop himself from linking his fingers through hers. His hand was shaking as he brought her hand up to his mouth to place a kiss to the back of her palm. Hesitantly, he let his eyes meet hers as they were stopped at a red light, and she was smiling at him with that special smile of hers. The one saved just for him and only when he was being particularly adorable.

They made it home safely and this time, Chloe was the first one through the door. So, of course, Lucifer paid the babysitter for the night and gave her a handsome tip. Then Lucifer looked toward the Detective and Trixie and he smiled; it felt like a piece of him that had been missing all day slotted into place. He couldn’t wait any longer, wanted nothing more than to be close to them, so he hugged them both. He held them both to him, and his heart tightened as Beatrice giggled at him. He placed a kiss on the little girl’s head and buried his nose in the Detective’s hair. They all stood there, huddled together by the doorway, for a long moment, before Trixie announced that she was hungry. 

Chloe and Lucifer smiled at each other and decided wordlessly that they would make dinner together. Trixie set herself up to draw pictures at the kitchen bar, while Chloe and Lucifer got dinner ready. They were dancing around each other, passing ingredients between them and playfully teasing the little girl at the counter. They touched each other gently and often, lingering in each other’s space. Lucifer would often be found with his hand on the Detective’s lower back. And Chloe was always either leaning into his space or touching some part of him. Hands and shoulders pressing against each other, occasional bumps of chests and shoulders. Of course, Lucifer occasionally came up behind Chloe as she was cooking and pressed his front to her back and looked over her shoulder to check if she needed anything. Chloe would look back over her shoulder and smile her soft smile at him. She leaned back into him whenever he did it, and if he ducked his head so his nose would touch her hair, then well, that was his business. 

Dinner was simple, but intimate, they sat at the small dinner table, and spoke softly to each other. They were listening to Trixie tell them about her day, and Chloe had her hand resting on his forearm sometimes as they ate, and when she moved it away, Lucifer’s hand could be found resting on her knee under the table if anyone had been bothered to look for it. As it was, no one was there to be bothered, so they continued with their light touches and intimate moments. And as they sometimes did before bedtime for Trixie they put on a nature documentary while the little girl colored some pictures on the floor. 

They sat closer to each other on the couch than they normally would, but they both felt that they needed this, to be close to each other. Lucifer had his arm resting around her shoulders and she rested her head on his shoulder. It was a comfortable placement for her, as it always had been (like that time in the park before they became… whatever they were now). But she was happy here with the two of them, her little family. Eventually, Trixie got too tired to draw, and Chloe watched as her daughter fell asleep in front of the television. She had wanted to make sure that the little girl was in bed by now, but she was much too comfortable to move. Lucifer was placing occasional kisses to the top of her head as he traced patters on her upper arm. And Chloe was tracing a mindless pattern on his knee as she leaned into him. 

Lucifer noticed that Trixie had stopped scribbling and looked up from the Detective to see the little girl passed out on the ground. He huffed out a fond chuckle and slipped out of the Detective’s light hold. She’d closed her eyes and groaned in complaint as he left her. “Just putting Beatrice to bed, darling. I’ll be right back,” he whispered, and then, he placed the gentlest of kisses to her forehead. As he scooped the little girl into his arms, she made a noise and shuffled around as she adjusted to his hold. She was under the cover in minutes, and the fact that she didn’t wake up at all made him feel proud (made him feel like she trusted him, him, the Devil and these two Decker women really just… he was absolutely gone for them, absolutely destroyed, and it was all his fault, really, but damn him all over again if he cared at all about any of that).

When he got back to the couch, Chloe had slumped over and was, no doubt, fully asleep. He rolled his eyes fondly at the picture she made, so similar to her daughter just a few moments ago. So, he did what he usually did at times like this and scooped Chloe into his arms. He walked her up the stairs as smoothly as he could and set her in the bed. Before he could settle her completely, he was stopped by one of her hands clutching at his waistcoat (he’d taken his jacket off at her request earlier and had complied because he wanted to be one layer closer to her, he felt his armor was unneeded). Her eyes opened, and she asked him, “Stay?” In answer he placed a kiss to her forehead and lingered there for a long, long time. When he stood up, he took off his waistcoat, belt, and shoes like he usually would. He slipped into bed, and this time wasted no time in touching her. He came up behind her and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. He fell asleep like that, and in the morning he woke rested, and ready for another day with his Detective.

That feeling didn’t last long. His brother called him as he was making breakfast for the Detective and Beatrice and informed him that his father had named him the favorite and that Mum was now angry that he was suddenly hesitant to help her or give her the last piece (all “I’m conflicted, brother… What would father think of me? Helping mother?”). The whole conversation put him in a mood and he almost snapped at the Detective as she asked him who was on the phone. She just raised a brow at him when he slammed a pan down on the counter instead of shouting at her. He turned and leaned back against the counter and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed deeply and reached a hand out toward her, knowing she probably wouldn’t come to him but hoping against hope that she would. She, of course, proved him wrong, and immediately grasped his hand. He pulled her into him and wrapped his arms around her. “Dreadfully sorry, darling,” he whispered into her hair. Over her shoulder, he watched Beatrice creep into the room, like she was afraid they were fighting, but she relaxed slightly when she saw them.

Chloe ran her nails up and down the middle of his back, and his mind blanked for a moment at the sensation. He tried not to shudder, but knew he failed when he felt her stop what she was doing and ask him, “What’s wrong, babe?”

He sighed and told her, softly so her daughter wouldn’t hear, he didn’t think she’d truly understand, “My father has just informed Amenadiel that he’s his favorite, and he’s being all high and mighty about it. Which means I’ll have to deal with my mother’s temper for a while…”

Chloe clutched him tighter and shushed him. It took him a moment, but he pulled away from her and started breakfast. Chloe kept close to him, and after Trixie had been fed and put on the bus she decided that she wanted to ride into work with him that day, because she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone and because she kind of loved riding to work with him.

She wanted to do something for him, to make him feel better, but she didn’t know what she could do. So she rested her hand on his as it rested on the console between them and saw him relax out of the corner of her eye. She allowed herself a small smile in response, but it faded as she watched him. He was biting the inside of his lip again. 

They were called to a crime scene almost immediately, and it was indeed a strange one. The body was burned from the head down to his torso and it really was a mystery. There was nothing there, barely any evidence and no DNA at all. Lucifer spent most of the morning ignoring his ringing phone. He got so annoyed with it at one point, that Chloe had to pull it out of his hand before he threw it and ruined her crime scene. She silenced it and put it in her coat pocket. She could feel it vibrating every so often and ignored it. She didn’t look at who kept calling, but they were indeed persistent.

The case wasn’t really progressing, so Lucifer went to see Linda, which led him to his mother (who had been calling him all morning, and his phone was back in his pocket and still silenced) and she told him that she was the one who had murdered Chez, who was in fact, their victim. And Lucifer was hard pressed to keep this information from the Detective but then Mum threatened her life and he found it quite easy. Then he lost her, so he had to search for her (and the hours that took from his time with the Detective made him just a little bitter). But he got waylaid by Amenadiel who decided that he needed some “brotherly advice”. Lucifer saw the opportunity and asked his brother for the last piece. He tried to explain that Mum had gone crazy and killed someone, that he had an idea, needed to get the piece for the safety of the world (“She’s leaking, brother! Burning people with divine light, and all that.”). Amenadiel, of course, had decided that maybe he was lying, which made Lucifer want to hit him repeatedly with something very heavy. 

“I do not lie, brother,” Lucifer reminded him sharply, and then he hung up the phone harshly after he asked him to please go check on Linda just in case their mother went back there. So he made his way to the precinct where he was told that the Detective was at the pier chasing down a lead with Daniel. So he tried his mother, only for her phone to go to voicemail. 

He’d been about to dial the Detective when she called him. He answered and with great relief, but instead of the Detective, it was his mother. She was angry at him and wanted all of the pieces. Since he was already on his way to the pier, he just growled at her to not hurt Chloe and called his brother back. “Amenadiel, I swear to Dad if you don’t tell me where that fucking piece is, I’ll tear you apart after I’m through with Mother!” he knew he sounded desperate, but he needed it. When Amenadiel tried to blow him off, Lucifer cursed. “She has Chloe!” he shouted. “She has Chloe, Amenadiel, and I will _not_ be the one to tell my daughter that her mother is gone! I refuse to let it happen! So tell me where you put it, brother… please…” He ended in a whisper, desperate and strained.

Amenadiel told him about his chance meeting with Daniel and how it was in the other man’s pocket. Lucifer put a little more lead into his foot and absentmindedly thanked his brother. He found Daniel first and basically had to wrestle with the man before he could get the piece. He would’ve knocked him out if he hadn’t found it when he did.

He rushed over to the Detective when he finally spotted her, and he was very upset to see the situation. Pushing himself in front of Chloe he made his mother focus on him and let the Detective focus on the man with the flame thrower. Which was… somewhat usual, actually. So he let the Detective deal with the flame thrower man trying to kill his mother, although he probably should be a little more concerned about that. He wasn’t, not about the fact that it was his mother, but the fact that if she was killed, the detective would be too. 

When time slowed, and he shoved his mother off of the pier and jumped with her. When she looked like she was going to attack, he lit the sword. “No, Mother!” he shouted. “No!” He was angry, maybe too angry, but his mother had almost hurt Chloe. “I have two options for you,” he began, seething. “I can take you very, very far away from here and kill you there, or-”

“Lucifer, you can’t mean to kill me,” she interrupted him, “I’m your mother!”

“Or!” Lucifer ignored her, trying not to explode. “I can help you leave, and you can create a new place, just for you, just how you want it…”

“I want to be with you and your brother. To make your father pay for what he did to me!” she screeched.

“Mum, just…” he shook his head and lit the sword. “If you had your own universe, you could make whatever you wanted! No father, your own rules…”

“What I want is you and your brother by my side!” she told him. “You’d know that if you were ever around! We could be happy, all of us!” She was accusing him and all he wanted was for her to leave so he could be with his family. 

“Mum,” he began, and he was glad he lit the sword while he had the chance, while he still had her cornered. “I am happy! I have… I have a family, I have a life here and I don’t want to go back! Moving backward won’t fix anything, mother, you have to move forward…” He cut a hole in the air next to her, to tempt her. “Forwards isn’t towards Father, Mum…”

Her brow furrowed, and she frowned at him. “A family? Where? With who?” 

He rolled his eyes heavenwards. “With the Detective, Mum!” he exclaims, frustrated. “They care about me, they need me! And I need them, Mum…” He put a hand out, begging her to understand. “I want to move forward with them… I want you to move forward…” He saw her look over to the rip in the universe, he was getting to her. “Mum… you have to go…”

When she nodded and let herself travel through the rip in space and time, Lucifer quickly threw the sword in with her but kept Amenadiel’s piece of it. She wouldn’t be able to use it and he would finally be rid of the damn thing. He fell to his knees and suddenly time caught up with them. He looked up and saw Chloe staring over the edge at him. 

“Lucifer, are you okay?” she called to him. Before he could answer, she just told him to wait right there and that she was on her way down. She got to him quickly, but before he could tell her he was fine, she practically jumped on him. She pulled back from his embrace and held his face in hers. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“Perfectly fine, darling,” he said with a soft smile and even softer eyes. She gave him one in return and turned to Dan who was helping Charlotte Richards up off of the sand. He was sort of glad she didn’t remember anything but can tell she’d been shaken. He could almost smell Hell all over her, and he wanted to get away from this particular beach as quickly as he could.

Finally, they were able to leave. Dan had taken the car he and Chloe had driven to the pier to take Charlotte home, so Chloe was stuck with him for the rest of the day. He was more than happy to give the Detective a ride home, but he wasn’t sure if he would be welcome today. He wanted to stay with them, to make sure they were safe, that his mother really was gone, but as soon as he pulled up to the Detective’s apartment, his phone rang, and he pulled it out. Maze was calling him, which was rare these days, so he answered it. He knew his face changed drastically because Chloe asked him what was wrong. When he rang off, he turned to her and said, “Darling, I have to go. Linda’s in hospital and Maze is with her and…”

She placed a hand on his arm and told him it was okay. “Go make sure she’s okay,” she told him. “Call me later, okay? Let me know what’s going on.”

He placed a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth as she leaned back into the car to tell him goodbye. He waited until she entered the apartment before he drove towards the hospital. He was driving a little faster that he perhaps should have, but he got there in one piece. He was led straight up to her room when he asked, and Maze told him that she would be right back. Before she left, he let her know that Mum was gone, and that Linda was safe now. Maze nodded but still looked like she was going to kill something, so he let her go.

He stayed with Linda while she healed and slept for a few quiet hours, making sure to send a text to his brother about what happened with Mum, but then his phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that it was Chloe requesting a video chat. He accepted, and a fond smile broke out on his face as he saw that both Chloe and Trixie were on the screen.

“Lucifer!” the little girl exclaimed happily. He grinned at her and was about to say something when she just kept talking. She was being quiet, no doubt her mother told her about Linda, and was telling him all about her day. He was listening, letting her happy face and voice soothe the parts of him that had been rumpled that day. He was snapped out of his thoughts by her asking, “Is Linda okay?”

He gave her a sad, gentle smile, and told her, “She will be, dearest heart.” Blatantly, he changed the subject, asking, “Isn’t it time for bed?”

“Yes,” Chloe replied, “and someone was wondering if you could read her the last chapter of the third _Harry Potter_ …”

He shook his head fondly and pulled the book up on the app he’d downloaded just for this purpose. Mostly, it was used when he and the Detective were on stakeouts and she was either being babysat or at her father’s house. “Alright, but only one chapter. We’re not starting the fourth one just yet, my dear heart…” She agreed with a yawn and snuggled into bed with her mother beside her. He scrolled through the app until he found what he was looking for. He cleared his throat and started, “ _“_ _Harry!" Hermione was tugging at his sleeve, staring at her watch. "We've got exactly ten minutes to get back down to the hospital wing without anybody seeing us -- before Dumbledore locks the door -”_ "

Once he was finished, he told Trixie goodnight (“Sleep well, dearest heart…”) before Chloe took a few minutes to ask if he wanted to sleep over again that night. He answered in the affirmative and stared at her as she spoke to him for a while longer. What he didn’t know, was that his face was showing anyone who looked at it exactly what he felt for her (which was exactly what Linda was seeing, at that moment).

Linda coughed, and Lucifer begged off with the Detective to tend to her. She was tired and she was still feeling a lot of pain, and Lucifer wished that he could take it from her. That he could help her. She was unconcerned about her injuries and instead asked him about Chloe and moving forward.

“My dear doctor,” he sighed, “you need to be resting, not worrying about me…”

“Lucifer, you _do_ need to move forward with Chloe,” Linda told him. “Especially if you’re going to be looking at her the way you were just looking at her.” She raised her browns at him and shifted uncomfortably.

“I realized earlier today…” he started. He looked down at his hands, fiddling a little with the ring he always wore. “That I need to tell Chloe the truth… that… that she needs to decide if she wants me around Beatrice, if she wants me in her life…”

“Of course she will, Lucifer,” Linda smiled at him. “The two of them adore you; that video call was proof enough…”

He huffed out a laugh and smirked at her, “Enjoy eavesdropping, doctor?”

She just returned his smirk and said, “Your reading voice is exceptionally enjoyable, is all.”

He waited until Maze returned and the called the Detective to let her know he was on his way. He got her voicemail and left one telling her that he was on his way and that he’d like to talk to her, to show her who he really was. He was almost to the car when he was hit over the head very hard with something very heavy. A dark figure dragged him into a waiting van and pulled everything but Lucifer’s trousers off and dumped it out in the parking garage by the Devil’s car. The figure closed the van’s doors and drove away after a short pause, taking Lucifer away from his Detective, who would sit up most of the night waiting for him and worrying that something had happened. 

×××

Lucifer had been missing for two days, and Chloe felt like she was losing her mind a little. Trixie would barely sleep (nightmares, and Lucifer wasn't there to sing for her), was very moody about anything and everything, she absolutely refused to go to her father’s house after she'd had a meltdown there and was very insistent that Lucifer would never break his promise which meant that something was very, very wrong (Chloe had tried to get Trixie to tell her why she didn't want to go to her dad’s, but the little girl refused to talk). Chloe knew that he would never break a promise, which was why she was just as worried about him as her daughter was (he had called and promised to be right over; he'd told her that he'd just finished visiting Linda at the hospital, and she saved the voicemail when he hadn’t shown up and she… she was just worried). It hadn't helped that when she tracked his phone, she'd found it, his car, his suit jacket, his shirt, and his shoes and socks in the hospital parking lot (that had taken the wind out of Dan’s sail pretty quickly; he’d thought that Lucifer had just up and left, which Chloe could never believe because that would be extremely out of character, and she had a voicemail that told her otherwise). When she’d found his things, she knew that she would have to tell Trixie what had happened (which was so, so hard, because both she and Trixie had ended up crying, and Chloe had absolutely no idea how to make her little Monkey feel better). A little over forty-eight hours after he'd left a message on her cell phone, she got a phone call at her desk about the BOLO she'd put out on him. He'd been found relatively unharmed and wanted to speak to her.

“Lucifer! What happened? Where have you been? Are you alright? Do you have any idea how worried I've been?” she began on the verge of tears. Dan’s head had snapped up at her tone, but she paid him no mind. “Trixie has been beside herself worrying about you! You promised-”

“Detective, darling, I'm alright,” he interrupted her. “I'm sorry, love, I really did try to make it…” Chloe sniffled, and he knew she was waiting for an explanation. “Someone hit me over the head and dragged me out into the desert. They just left me there; I woke up very early this morning covered in sand.” He said, sounding tired and somewhat disgusted.

“When can I see you?” she asked quietly.

“Give me about two hours, darling. I'll be at my penthouse,” he told her.

She took a shaky breath and held back telling him that that wasn't soon enough. “I'm pulling Trixie out of school and we're coming to see you in two hours exactly, Lucifer,” she told him. Her voice was firm, even as there were tears streaming steadily down her face.

“Two hours, darling,” he told her, and then he was told to hang up the phone, so they could get him home. 

Chloe hadn't wanted to hang up either, but she had a daughter to collect and she couldn't do that without hanging up her desk phone. When she had gathered herself enough, she went to the Lieutenant’s office to ask for the rest of the day off, for personal reasons (it was her last day as their lieutenant and she must have been feeling generous, or been made aware of Lucifer being found, because it was granted to her immediately). She tried not to rush over to Trixie’s school, but there was very little traffic and the drive was easy.

As soon as her daughter was in her sights, Chloe scooped her into her arms and hugged her close. “Mommy, what's wrong? Is it Lucifer? Is he okay?” Trixie asked, more than a little worried. She'd been extremely moody for the past few days, even her teachers had noticed (they had called her about it and she’d had to explain about Lucifer's kidnapping, which was difficult for her, but they had understood after Trixie had called him her papa).

“They found him, baby,” she sniffled, “we're gonna go see him in a little while, okay?”

“Is he in the hospital?” Trixie asked, tears gathering in her eyes. 

“No, Monkey, he's at his house, and he's okay, but we have to go pack a bag, so we can stay with him for a little bit,” she said. She knew that Trixie had been very worried about Lucifer.

Chloe bundled her daughter into the car and tried to make the drive back to hers last. Once she sent Trixie to her room with instructions to pack clothes and one or two toys, she looked at her watch. Thirty-five minutes to pack and then the thirty-minute drive to Lux. She allowed herself a moment to breathe, before making herself pack a bag as slowly as possible. Halfway into her packing, Trixie climbed onto her bed with her bag and asked if it was ok that she packed three books, so she and Lucifer could read them.

“Of course, it is, Monkey,” Chloe said, smiling gently.

“And you're sure that Lucifer's okay?” the little girl asked, tears filling her eyes once again. 

Chloe felt her heart almost shatter at that. “I'm sure, baby. I talked to Lucifer right before I came and got you,” she said, pulling her daughter into her arms. “You know that Lucifer never lies, don't you?” When Trixie nodded against her shoulder, Chloe continued, “And he's very strong, so there aren't many people who can hurt him.”

“That's why it's so scary when somebody does hurt him,” Trixie told her, her voice thick like she was fighting through her tears.

Chloe just held her tighter, burying her face in her daughter's hair, and trying to hold back her tears. She calmed her daughter down and rushed through the rest of her packing. She wasn't waiting ten extra minutes when her daughter was this upset. They both needed to see Lucifer, and they needed to see him as soon as they could.

The drive to Lux was a quiet one. The both of them too caught up in their thoughts and worries to talk much. Trixie hadn't answered her questions about how her day at school was, so they just rode in silence. When they got to Lux, Chloe let the valet take the car and she ushered Trixie through the front door and directly to the elevator. There was a large, generically attractive man standing outside of it, and he nodded to them politely as they entered. Chloe and Trixie just shrugged at each other as soon as the elevator doors closed.

When the doors to the penthouse opened and as soon as Trixie caught sight of Lucifer, who was standing in front of Linda in one of his robes and a pair of silk pajama pants, she ran at him full speed. “Papa!” she exclaimed, and she was enveloped in his arms as he knelt to catch her as she flew at him. She started crying in earnest as he picked her up.

“I'm alright, my dearest heart,” he told her immediately, rubbing her back and clutching her close to him. He buried his nose in her hair and tried to soothe her. “I'm so sorry, little love, I didn't mean to worry you…” Eventually, her sobs softened into sniffles, but she never once loosened her hold on his neck. “That's it, dearest heart, it's alright…” As soon as Trixie settled, sniffling into his shoulder, he looked up towards the elevator doors and saw the Detective just standing there, staring at him with trepidation and tears in her eyes. He opened one of his arms toward her, and she immediately rushed over to him, burying her face in his chest. He didn't try to comfort her like he had Trixie, but he held her just as close.

“You're not hurt, right, Lucifer?” Trixie asked, her breath hitching on every other word.

Lucifer kissed her hair and hugged the two of them closer. “No, Beatrice, I'm not hurt. I promise, dearest heart,” he told them gently. Trixie settled against him and her mother, she yawned, and Lucifer hid his smile in Chloe's hair.

When Chloe pulled back a few minutes later, she checked on Trixie, who was deeply asleep as Chloe thought she would be. She pulled her from Lucifer's arms (his involuntary whine of protest almost made her break into tears again because, oh fuck, this man loved her daughter like she was his own and wanted to hold her because they both needed it) and walked over to Lucifer's room to tuck her daughter into bed. When she made it back to Lucifer, who had been watching her every move like he couldn't believe she was with him, that she cared enough to show up, she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest once again. She felt him sigh in relief as his arms wrapped around her.

“Lucifer?” Linda asked, and Chloe felt him jump like he had forgotten she was there (Chloe hadn't but she just didn't care, this man was hers and she needed him, needed to know he was okay, everyone else be damned).

“Sorry, Doctor,” Lucifer sighed. “I-”

Linda cut him off. “It's okay, Lucifer, but…” She paused, watching him closely, Chloe was still clinging to him, and he was absently rubbing her back as she silently cried into his chest. “You never told me that Trixie calls you ‘papa’...” she said, a small smile on her face.

Lucifer stiffened. “I wasn't aware I had to,” he said, staring at her. Almost daring her to challenge his claim to the little girl.

“You didn't have to,” Linda said, “I just… I didn't know you two had grown that close…” She met his eyes and smiled, genuinely happy for him. “It's good,” she told him, “for both of you.” When he ducked his head, hiding a small smile in the Detective's hair, she bid him goodbye, and rolled herself toward the elevator. She watched them as the doors closed, still wrapped up in each other, taking the comfort they needed.

Eventually Chloe pulled back from him and pushed at him until he sat on the couch. As soon as he settled, she climbed into his lap and curled into him. They were quiet for a while until Chloe started talking, “Trixie didn't want sleep while you were gone. She was so worried that she barely ate, and she's cried herself to sleep for two nights in a row.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I couldn't sleep at all, and I couldn't eat anything because knew I wouldn't be able to keep it down… When I found your phone and your car… Lucifer, I'd only ever been that scared when Malcolm had Trixie…” 

And then she had tears running down her face again, and she was trying her hardest not to start sobbing, but she failed as soon as Lucifer hugged her closer and whispered into her hair, “I'm here now, my dearest darling. It's alright, I'm here.” She sobbed while he hushed her and told her to sleep, that he’d be with them when she woke, he promised her that much when she'd asked him to through her tears. She fell asleep to him telling her he was okay, and that he would still be when she woke.

The next time she opened her eyes, she was horizontal, and she was snuggled against someone very warm who was talking softly to someone else. As she came back to herself, she realized (because she'd taken a deep breath, and he always smelled the same, which was to say he smelled amazing and just… he smelled like Lucifer…) that she was snuggled against Lucifer and that he was talking to her daughter about something in space or something, she wasn't sure. She let his voice wash over her and sighed in contentment. 

“So, the only reason there's black holes is because you and your brother got in a fight?” she heard her daughter ask.

“Michael started it,” Lucifer replied, sounding like he was pouting, which was a complete possibility. “He hated being wrong, but he always was. But that was only because Uriel was… always right…”

He sounded so profoundly sad so suddenly that Chloe chose that moment to stretch and ‘wake up’. Which turned Trixie’s attention towards her. “Mommy! Did you sleep good like I did? Doesn't Lucifer’s bed feel like a cloud?” her daughter asked, moving to squeeze between Chloe and Lucifer.

Lucifer redirected her so that she was lying on top of him instead of between them (and she had to hide her smile in his chest [which was bare and just… new and… she just really liked it when he was shirtless] because he wanted her close to him just like she wanted him to her). “It does feel like a cloud, Monkey,” she said, her voice rough with sleep.

Trixie told them about what she thought clouds actually felt like, and whether or not you could capture them (Lucifer sighed heavily at this like he wanted to correct her, but he held back until she asked, which she did, so he told her that clouds were very much like fog and were quite difficult to capture). They let her ramble on about whatever she wanted, only chiming in when she asked them something. Chloe dozed in and out of the conversation, mostly listening to her two favorite people talk. She knew that at some point she would need to check the time and her phone for any messages, but for now, she wanted to just be with the family they had made.

“I'm starving!” Trixie exclaimed, waking Chloe fully. She sat up and looked over at her bedmates. Trixie was lying on top of Lucifer (who was shirtless, her brain kept shouting that at her, and that… Chloe had to focus on something else immediately because… well, he was a very good looking man and that mixed with him being a great dad was just… she needed to move away from him very soon before she kissed the hell out of him) with her feet in the air and her chin propped up on her hands. Lucifer looked like he was enjoying just being with them in whatever way they let him.

“What do you want to eat, dearest heart?” Lucifer asked stretching his arms above his head. He moved to stand and took Trixie with him making her giggle as he hung her upside down for a moment.

“Can you make pancakes?” she asked. “And sausages? And scrambled eggs? And bacon?”

Lucifer chuckled and started from the room. When he heard Chloe's stomach rumble from the doorway, he sighed and grumbled good-naturedly, “Did either of you eat anything while I was gone?” Which was apparently the wrong thing to say because Trixie suddenly clutched him tightly around the neck and Chloe stood quickly from the bed and rushed over to wrap her arms around him from behind. He sighed again, this time tinged with sadness, and apologized softly to them.

“It's okay, Papa,” Trixie whispered. “Just give us lot of hugs and cuddle time, and soon we won't be sad anymore.”

“That's all it takes?” he asked, with a sort of sad sounding huff of a laugh.

Chloe hugged him tighter, breathing in the scent of him (which was so much more potent than it was through his suits), and said, “That's all it takes…”

They stood there until Trixie’s stomach growled and Chloe laughed. “Let's get our little monkey something to eat,” she told him smiling as she pulled away.

He led them to the kitchen, which was as spotless as the rest of the penthouse and sat the little girl on the counter. Chloe hopped up to sit beside her daughter, and just watched Lucifer as he started gathering ingredients for pancakes. She and Trixie just sat there as he cooked for them, watching him like they were afraid that he'd disappear if they didn't. When he asked Trixie what she'd been doing at school, she told him how her classes had been. Which, somehow, got her started talking about how her father had thought that Lucifer had just left them. “I told him that you never ever would, and he got mad at me, but I told him I wanted to go back to Mommy's house until she found you,” she told him. 

“I didn't know that he told you that, monkey,” Chloe said, softly brushing her daughter's hair back from her face.

“He was angry because I couldn't eat,” Trixie said, looking at her hands. “My tummy hurt too much because I was too sad…”

Chloe hugged Trixie to her side and looked at Lucifer, whose forehead was creased with guilt. She caught his eyes and smiled at him, to reassure him to let him know that they didn't blame him for anything, that they were just glad that he was okay. 

“But you didn't leave!” Trixie said brightly. “And you didn't get hurt, so that's good! And you've never broken a promise on purpose, so that's even better!” She grinned at him, and he detoured as he walked back to the stove from the fridge, so he could place a kiss to her forehead. “You always keep your promises, right, Lucifer?” she asked, with a small, unsure smile.

“That's right, dearest heart,” he told her with a gentle smile. He watched Chloe and Trixie talk and joke with each other. He was glad he was back with them, as it was one of the things he'd been worried about as he'd been walking through the desert. He was also relieved that Beatrice hadn't needed much more reassurance than that, that she trusted and believed in him like she did.

He led them to the small table he mainly used for breakfast and set their very full plates down on it. He waited for them to start eating before he did. He felt an overwhelming need to watch over them, to protect them, to take care of their needs before his own. He knew they wanted today to be for taking care of him, and he would let them, but only because they needed it.

He turned away from them briefly but turned back when he heard a loud clatter. The Detective had dropped her fork and was gaping at him. “What?” he asked, slightly self-conscious.

“Your…” she bit her lip and gestured over her shoulder. She reached her hand out towards him, and when he came to her, she caught his arm (and she caressed his bicep with her thumb, which was just… it was a great bicep, she thought, and she really needed to focus). She didn't turn him, but she told him in a whisper, so Trixie didn't hear her, “Your scars…” 

His face went slack, and he shifted uncomfortably, waiting for her to ask him. She didn't, but she pulled him closer and rested her forehead on his arm near her hand. He relaxed against her and ran a hand through her hair before slowly pulling away. He didn't want to talk about it and was glad she didn't ask.

Before long, Chloe gave into her urge to know the time and check her messages. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, which made sense since she pulled Trixie from school at around ten o’clock that morning. She had three missed calls from Dan and about five from Ella (not including the thirteen texts from her practically demanding to know if Lucifer was okay). Chloe hadn't bothered to call Ella back, she just sent her a picture of Lucifer reading to Trixie as they were seated next to each other on the couch (and if Lucifer was shirtless in that picture, that was okay, and if that picture became Chloe’s phone background, that was okay too). Ella responded with the words “gurl yaasss!”, the eyes emoji, the heart eyes emoji, and a smirky face, not precisely in that order, which made Chloe laugh quietly to herself. She called Dan back after listening to the voicemails he had left wanting to know if they were okay and that he had a new case, so he might not answer if she called. When he didn't answer, she just sent him a text telling him they were okay, and Lucifer was too. She responded to various other messages and updates on cases and the like, but when she finished, she sat on Lucifer's other side and smiled at him as he read to her daughter.

After they had finished a few chapters, Trixie plucked the book from his hands and sat herself in his lap facing him. She frowned at him, and he raised his eyebrows at her trying to figure out what she was looking for. “Mommy, I think Lucifer needs super-cuddles and cake,” she said with a very serious sigh.

“Super-cuddles _and_ cake?” Chloe gasped dramatically, purely for effect, “that sounds serious…”

Trixie nodded slowly and sighed heavily. “Very serious, Mommy. And I think he needs you to do that thing you do for me when I don't feel good,” she decided.

“Lucifer doesn't like it when people touch his back, Monkey,” Chloe told her daughter gently. 

Trixie frowned and hugged Lucifer around his neck. “But how will he feel better?” Trixie’s voice wobbled, and Lucifer realized, quite suddenly, that she wasn't quite as okay as he'd thought.

“I'll let mum touch my back, dearest heart. I don't mind as long as it's you and mum,” Lucifer told her. 

That settled, Trixie pulled them back to his bed by their hands and told her mother to sit back, leaning against as many pillows as possible. She then had Lucifer lie down on his front, so his head was pillowed against the Detective’s stomach and he was lying half on top of her, which was awkward for them, but only for a moment because Trixie ran to grab a book and snuggled herself so that she was lying on his legs using one as a pillow and opening her book to read to herself. Chloe smiled fondly at the two of them and brought her hand up to his shoulder, to let him know she was going to touch his back. As soon as she ran her nails softly up and down the center his back, right between his shoulder blades, he shuddered and let out a slow, ragged breath. He went boneless against her and tucked his face tighter against her stomach.

“Okay?” She whispered stopping the movement of her hand, not wanting to disturb the moment, but wanting to make sure she hadn't crossed a line.

He fisted the material of her shirt and tried to hide his face as he shuddered again. “Yes,” he told her. “More?” he asked, his voice soft and small, like he wasn't sure how to take comfort or affection, not sure he could ask for it and receive it.

Chloe carded her other hand through his hair briefly before resuming the motion of the one on his back. “Whatever you need,” she told him softly, gently, like he meant something to her, and he did, he meant so, so much. She caressed the side his face as he shuddered again, and eventually he settled. He still shuddered and gasped occasionally, but he never asked her to stop (and she never touched his shoulder blades where his scars used to be).

Eventually, he asked her, his voice small and hesitant, “Can you… Can you do my shoulders too?”

She leaned down and placed a kiss to his head. “Sure,” she told him, trying not to show him what a big deal she thought it was that he'd asked. She started a crisscross pattern over his back, just like she'd do if Trixie was sick. She felt him shudder harder and this time he groaned, shuddering and soft, into her stomach. She kept her touch gentle and rhythmic.

She realized after a few moments that one of his hands had slipped under her shirt. He wasn't doing anything inappropriate, and she was thinking that somehow the skin to skin contact was helping him. She remembered how relaxed he was earlier as she'd been lying her head on his chest, and how as soon as she'd rested her face against the skin of his chest, he'd relaxed into the contact. She used her other hand to lightly massage the back of his neck, and she smiled fondly at the top of his head as he went absolutely boneless.

A long while passed, and Chloe slowly stopped her caresses. Lucifer lifted his head and blinked slowly at her, his entire body relaxed in a way she'd never seen before. 

“Am I too heavy?” he asked her suddenly, his brow furrowed like it was difficult for him to say words.

She pulled him back down to her and shook her head. “No,” she told him simply. His body went slack, and he nuzzled her stomach with his face. She stroked his face and let her fingers card into his hair, enjoying that he’d gone completely boneless. She was glad that he trusted her like this, that he was relaxed enough that he was letting her touch his back. She let her hands wander the planes of his back again and wondered exactly what happened to his scars. She had been worried when she’d seen them gone, seen his reaction to her noticing them gone (and it broke her heart, the way he’d assumed that she wouldn’t notice the changes of his body, the way he’d seemed stricken by the news, like he’d been trying not to think about it but was reminded). She stretched her neck to see how Trixie was fairing and smiled as she realized that her little girl had fallen asleep curled up in the pocket created by Lucifer’s bent leg. She did another pass over the center of his back pressing harder as if to massage him and then her eyes widened in shock as a large set of wings erupted from his back.

Lucifer seemed like he wasn’t going to react for a moment, but then she realized that he’d stopped breathing and seemed to be waiting for her to make her move. The thing was, that she had no idea how to react, because this was something that wasn’t actually happening. It couldn’t be because then she would be going crazy and that-

One of them moved, and she realized, quite abruptly, that her hand was resting on one of them and it felt like it was alive, like it was part of him and she just… she was pretty sure she was going to pass out, but she really, really didn’t want to. So, she forced herself to breathe and lightly stroked the feathers under her hand. She cleared her throat and managed to ask, her voice shaky, “So, it’s all true?”

“I’m afraid so, darling…” he whispered, sounding like he was ready to be scolded. “I’ll… I’ll leave if you’d like. Go somewhere far away and never talk to you or…” She felt his breathing become unsteady and was about to ask him what he was talking about, but he barreled on, his throat sounding tight, “Or Beatrice ever again. Just say the word, Detective- Chloe and I’ll-”

“Shhh, Lucifer, babe, it’s okay,” she said as she turned his face to hers. She placed a kiss on his forehead and she stroked his cheeks lightly as a few tears streamed down each one. She knew it was going to take some adjusting to be able to wrap her head around it, but she would never leave him to think that they didn’t want him around. They wanted him with them, and would always want him, even if it turned out he was the Devil and he really has never lied to her and- She realized suddenly that the best, kindest, gentlest of souls was the Devil. And sure he could be volatile and dangerous and all manner of unsavory things, but he never crossed the line into putting her in danger. Would never even think of putting Trixie in danger, would probably kill anyone who did if she ever let him. And right now, this man, this fragile, ancient being, needed her to tell him that he was wanted, would always be wanted, and all at once she became fiercely angry that he even thought that way. So she hugged him tight and told him over and over that she didn’t want him to leave, that Trixie wanted him here too (and that no she wasn’t scared of him and never would be because she lo- she… she cared for him so much and Beatrice did as well, and “Lucifer, please, please don’t leave us! Please stay! Just… just stay? Please…”).

(And of course he did, he’d do anything she asked of him, would die for her many times over and would do so again if she required it. Which he’d told her, and she promised him, _him_ , the Devil that she would never ask that of him, that she wanted him to live for her too, not just to die. And he… well, he could never deny her anything, but this… if it came down to a choice he wouldn’t hesitate, hadn’t before…)

He shrugged his wings away (and he could still feel the ghosts of her hands on them, caressing them, feeling their gentle grace) and buried his face into her shoulder. She had pulled him up to her, and they had only heard Trixie groan in complaint once while he shifted. She had one hand in his hair and the other was tracing gentle patterns over the small of his back. She was hoping to make him relax enough to fall asleep, and it seemed like it was finally working. She buried her nose in his hair and smiled. He still smelled like himself, still smelled like her Lucifer. That more than anything made her feel like everything was going to be alright.

×××

Their investigation into who kidnapped Lucifer ended up being attached to the new case they were working on, but only after they’d went to the scene of the crime (and they only went there after they had taken Trixie to school, who had extracted the promise that they were going to spend the night together again, and that, yes, Lucifer was fine and that they would both call her when she got out of school to let her know what time they were coming home). The place in the desert he’d woken up in had also contained another body, which Lucifer hadn’t seen the day before. 

Of course, they had to head into the station where Ella was excited to meet the new Lieutenant but no one else was. The speech he gave wasn’t really a speech and for some reason Lucifer’s instincts told him that there was something off about this man. And he didn’t make a great impression at all, especially with the Detective and Daniel. Saying that Daniel had gotten off easy, which was true, and Lucifer thought that perhaps the other man had deserved the ‘corrupt cop’ comment (but really only because of the other man’s disregard for his daughter). 

And then he’d come after Lucifer like he was trying to rile him up. When Lucifer offered his hand the Lieutenant refused to shake it on the basis of Lucifer’s past sexual partners (which was half the usual number, even less now [and really, he hadn’t had sex with anyone in a while which was frustrating, but he just… he couldn’t…] ever since he’d started… having feelings for the detective). Lucifer hadn’t expected the pissing contest, but he was more than willing to participate. So when the other man made the comment of Lucifer’s file being longer than his Johnson, well, Lucifer couldn’t resist quipping back. Of course, Chloe took that moment to cut in.

“You’re Lucifer’s partner,” Pierce had said. Quite disrespectfully. And that wasn’t something Lucifer would stand for. Not if it was directed at his Detective.

Before Chloe could stammer out a reply, Lucifer cut in, “I’m hers, actually… Civilian consultant and all that.”

“That’s what I said,” the other man replied and tried to walk away.

“No,” Lucifer said, grabbing the other man’s bicep in a bruising grip, “you really didn’t.” He stared the other man down until he looked away and blinked. Chloe’s hand came to rest on Lucifer’s arm and the look she gave him told him to cut it out. So, he dropped the Lieutenant’s arm and straightened the lines of his suit while staring at the man who still hadn’t moved on. Chloe was about to do something to dissolve the tension, when Lucifer said to her, without looking away from the man who couldn’t look him in the eye now, “Darling, perhaps Miss Lopez is ready to have a chat with us…”

“Yeah,” Chloe said, and crossed her arms. “Come on, let’s go.” And when he looked away from the other man to meet the Detective’s eyes, his entire body relaxed and without even acknowledging the other man, he followed her away from the man. But before they could get there Amenadiel came in and wanted to talk to him. 

He had a quick chat with his brother, and the Detective decided to stick by him. When Amenadiel tried to talk around their celestial issues, Lucifer rolled his eyes and said, “She knows, brother.”

Amenadiel shook his head and sighed. “You have to stop just telling people, Luci…” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “What does this text mean? It makes no sense!”

Lucifer rolled his eyes and grabbed the phone, pointing out the emojis as he said, “I ignited the flaming sword, used it to cut a hole in space and time, Mum’s light flooded through, then it closed up behind her, all good!” (And the fact that the Detective goggled at them for a long moment made Lucifer want to laugh, he hadn’t considered how freeing, how fun it would be to have the Detective in the know.)

He was about to continue talking when Amenadiel sat down in shock. “Mom’s gone?”

Lucifer paused and considered his brother for a moment, and then said, “Yes. Yes, she said goodbye forever, she loves you very much… etcetera, etcetera…” He looked at the Detective and she placed a hand on his arm. She eyed the door and looked back at him, silently asking if they wanted time alone, but Lucifer just slid into her space and slipped a hand to the small of her back. “But,” Lucifer began, and pulled something out of his pocket, holding it out to his older brother, “you get your necklace back, and we all know how attached to that you are.” His arms tensed a little but then he forced himself to relax. “Now, about my kidnapping; whoever it was had to of celestial origins because the Detective was at home with Beatrice, and hold on… you’ve got your powers back, brother, the ‘a’ on the keychain stands for Amenadiel, doesn’t it? God’s favorite son back in the circle and-”

“I don’t have my powers,” Amenadiel cuts him off. When Lucifer stares at him uncomprehending, he continues. “It appears that stopping time was just a one-time thing…”

“But… you’ve got your wings back, haven’t you?” Lucifer asked, and his frame became even more stiff against Chloe’s and she brought one of her hands up to his chest to soothe him. When his brother told him that he didn’t his brow furrowed, and he scoffed. His jaw clenched, and he looked like he was betrayed. “Isn’t that Ironic? You want you wings back and didn’t get them and I…” He bit his lip and looked down at the Detective who nodded gently at him, her hand now resting over his heart. “And I have mine tacked back on against my will…”

Amenadiel gaped at him, “What? How is that possible? Luci, what happened?”

“I was kidnapped, probably by father, sent out into the desert, and had my wings reattached like a bloody Mr. Potato head!” Lucifer tried not to shout. 

Thankfully, they were interrupted by Ella, who came to give them the lead they needed. Of course they had to watch Ella hug his brother and feel him up, which threw Lucifer off his wits more than having to tell his brother about his wings. He and Chloe escaped to follow their lead as soon as they saw their chance. Once they got to their new suspect’s hotel and had a bit of an altercation that involved Lucifer throwing him off of a balcony, she was back to scolding him.

“Well, he was rude to your lady bits, darling, that’s unacceptable! They deserve the utmost respect!” he insisted, as they put their soaking wet suspect in the back seat of the police cruiser. 

“He was,” she agreed, “but that doesn’t mean that you get to throw people off of balconies, Lucifer. I know this is attached to your kidnapping too, but you need to be calm and reasonable about it. That way you get to the truth.”

As they brought their man back to the station, Chloe’s phone rang, and she realized that it was Trixie. She handed her phone to Lucifer and he answered it, “Hello, dearest heart… No, we’re alright… We might be home a little later than usual, little love… She’s driving, we’ve got someone in the car… I’ll tell her for you, dearest heart… I promise… We love you, too, darling girl.” And he hung up and told her, “Beatrice says she loves you and that wants to order out because it’s a weekend and I still have a bedtime story to make up to her. I have no idea what that has to do with take away, darling, but it’s what she wants.”

They interrogated their rich boy and when they heard about the pranking site, they decided that that would be the way to find their murderer. So they outfitted Dan to be the kidnap-ee, and for posterity and authentic-ness (according to Chloe when Dan asked her) Lucifer would be the one to set up the parameters of the ‘torture’ he would endure. (The amount of ridiculous questions that Lucifer was asking Dan about hamsters and enclosed spaces and all manner of weird things, was just… It made Dan more than a little nervous, which just made Lucifer’s sinister grin even larger. And the feedback loop involved with that just kept growing and growing, which wasn’t helping Dan’s nerves at all.)

Chloe had asked Lucifer to go easy on him, but the Devil was relishing in finally getting to torture Daniel like he deserved for making Beatrice cry. That, of course, had to be postponed because Lucifer needed answers and perhaps these kidnappers could give him some. He had enough forethought, to bring a wire with him, so the Detective could hear what was happening. He let himself be taken and when they used the cattle prod on him, he was actually enjoying it a little, but he had a job to do, so he broke his bonds and asked his questions. The answers he received weren’t as bad as he expected, but now they had to find the man who’d taken him. He stepped out of the building to see the Detective and Daniel standing next to a police cruiser. 

Chloe rushed at him and punched him in the shoulder very hard. As he said ‘ouch’ in a whine, she wrapped her arms around his waist and he settled his arms around her after a moment’s hesitation. “Do you have any idea how it felt seeing you taken like that?” Chloe told him, her voice tight and face buried in his chest. “I know it wasn’t real, but Lucifer don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!” 

“Sorry, darling,” he whispered into her hair. “I-I wasn’t thinking, love… I just wanted answers… I hooked a wire up to the console…”

“After the first taser it cut out,” Chloe said, pulling back with tears on her lashes, and Lucifer tsk-ed at them, wiping them away with his thumbs. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked, fingering the burns on his shirt.

“No,” he told her. He led her back to the car and saw Daniel with the keys on the driver’s side. He opened the passenger side door for her and let her in. He would have preferred to drive so he could hold her hand and reassure her that he was okay. Instead, he had to settle for meeting her eyes every time she looked back at him from her place in the front seat. He told them everything he was told by the terrified ‘kidnappers’ and when they got back to the station Chloe led him into the lab and demanded that he take off his shirt. 

“Darling, I really don’t think this is the time or place,” he told her meeting eyes with Ella who was wide-eyed with either shock or excitement, he couldn’t tell. 

“You were hit with a taser, Lucifer,” she reminded him. “I want to see how bad it is…”

“Cattle prod,” he corrected her, and that made her face twist in a strange way, but he put that aside, and crowded her. “Chloe, I’m not hurt. I promise you…” When she stared at him unconvinced and tugging lightly at his shirt like she wanted to take it off, but didn’t dare, he sighed and started unbuttoning. As soon he was done he opened his shirt, so she could see all of him. He shuddered and sucked in a breath when she touched his stomach, and he vaguely heard Ella choking on something, but didn’t focus on that. He focused on Chloe and her reaction to him, to what she was seeing. “I’ll explain it later, my darling,” he told her when she looked up at him in question. 

She nodded and called Ella out to the bullpen, so they could talk through all their evidence. When Lucifer’s information and the tire treads of the roadkill came through with a suspect, Chloe and Lucifer rushed off to his apartment. Lucifer’s presence seemed to terrify the man, and he was basically inconsolable as Lucifer screamed at him, demanding to know what he had to do with his kidnapping. He was just a pawn, he’d told them, tears of fear streaming down his face, and Lucifer demanded to know about his wings. 

“I opened the back and you just had them!” he screamed, “I couldn’t… I just left you there, man, I just had to get out! The Sinnerman, he’s the one you want, he’s the one who asked me to do it!” 

Once he was in a squad car on his way to be processed, Lucifer felt Chloe place a hand on the center of his back. He just looked defeated (he’d realized that his devil face was gone and he’s… just lost), and as soon as they could they made their way home to Beatrice. They ordered food on the way home so that it would be there soon after they got there. Beatrice clung to Lucifer when he made it through the front door and he was glad. He was afraid that his being gone would affect her more than this, would give her nightmares, but she was coping well, and he was glad. 

They ate as soon as they were able, and Lucifer lost himself in his thoughts as they put a movie in. He was so confused about the fact that his wings were back. He wanted them gone, and he wanted his devil face back. He wanted to cut them off, wanted to rip these damned appendages off of his back with everything he was. He knew he couldn’t yet, but as soon as he was back at his penthouse and the Detective was far enough away from him, he was cutting them off even if he had to do it himself. Chloe called his attention to the little girl that had started nodding off on the couch between them. 

“Come now, Beatrice,” he chuckled fondly, “let’s get into bed, dear heart.” She allowed herself to be carried and then she demanded that he read her the second chapter of the fourth _Harry Potter,_ so he gave her a small bow and perched himself on the side of her bed. He opened the book and started to read, “ _Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin…_ ”

He finished the chapter before she fell asleep, and the kiss he placed to the side of her head was infinitely gentle. He watched Chloe tell her daughter goodnight and then he followed the Detective back out to the living room. She sat him down and curled into his lap. He was surprised. She rarely ever asked for this type of comfort and he was unprepared for a moment, but he caught up quickly and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his neck and he turned his head to place tender kisses to her forehead. He wasn’t sure why she needed him, but he let her take what she needed from him. 

“Lucifer,” she began, “today really scared me. And I know you didn’t mean for it to but… Lucifer I just got you back and you dove head first into the arms of the people we thought had left you to die in the desert…” She lifted her head, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. His heart broke and he rested his forehead to hers. “I know you wanted answers, Lucifer, I understand that. But if you’d been taken again, or worse, I…” her voice broke and his heart shattered into pieces, “I can’t lose you…” He took a breath to speak, but she beat him to it. “I know you’re a tough supernatural being… but I’ve seen you hurt, and I never liked that before, so why did you think I would now?”

“My dearest darling,” he began, “I am so sorry for causing you grief. I… I understand that… It’s difficult for me to… to remember that there are others that care for me, for my wellbeing… I know I shouldn’t have done it…” He stopped there for a long moment, unsure of what to do but willing to sacrifice anything if it made her tears stop. “I can only be hurt when you’re near me,” he told her. When she blinked at him like she didn’t understand, he tried again. “I’m immortal when you’re a certain distance away from me. I don’t exactly know how far, and I’m not exactly sure of the other parameters, but that’s the way of it.”

“You… and you’re still here?” she asked. And he frowned at her and she sighed in frustration. She wiped her tears away and asked him, “Why do you stick around? For your own safety you should…”

He let himself smile at her and he pulled her close to him again. “Simply because I want to be with you,” he said, voice soft and eyes softer. “I don’t know why it’s like this, but it is. I won’t leave you for something as simple as my own safety.”

She sniffled, but she gave him a little smile, “I don’t want you to leave me, leave us…” They were quiet for a while, Chloe curling into his arms, and Lucifer holding her as close as he could. Eventually, she said, sleep coming to claim her, “We’re going to have a talk about you being the Devil, and it’s going to be a long one, but it’ll be good I think…”

He smiled down at her a little sadly, and simply said, “Alright, darling.” And he carried her to bed, settling her softly into the blankets. She pulled at his collar until he agreed to lie down with her, and he asked her twice if she was sure, if she really wanted the Devil in her bed. She just smiled and pulled at his collar once more until he pulled off his belt. He was about to lie down when she stopped him with a yawn. She sat up and shuffled over to him. In her sleepiness, she found the bravery she’d been lacking earlier that day and unbuttoned his shirt. She pulled at it until he shrugged it off and as soon as he was in bed, she was snuggling up to him. She let her head rest on his shoulder and he was in awe at the contact. He didn’t know why she wanted his shirt off, but as she drifted off into sleep, the fingers of her hand tracing patterns fainter and fainter the closer she got to dream land, he knew he needed it just as much as she had. 

He had never really enjoyed being touched unless he was having sex, but this… that was something they had done the day before, and he remembered this morning when he’d caught her pouting as he exited the closet fully dressed, and he knew he looked good, really, but her pout was clearly about missing this, if her actions now could mean anything. He was finicky about being touched, but he almost always allowed the Detective unfettered access to his body. He allowed her to do what she would to him whenever she asked. Just like tonight, just like yesterday. He wanted her to always feel like she could ask anything of him, that she could feel comfortable. He was getting better at handling Chloe touching him, he could sometimes follow her lead with no hesitation at all. 

He looked down the woman whose head was pillowed on his shoulder and gave her a sweet smile. He turned to lay on his side, gathering her into his arms and holding her as close as he could. He could give her this, he could let her take the comfort she needed from him. He knew she would let him take some too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go last chapter!! enjoy!!

When Lucifer finally gets himself to his penthouse, the first thing he does is cut his wings off. It hurts a little more than he remembers it doing and the wounds are sore. Linda had called him last night when he was at the Detective’s apartment to remind him about his appointment with her. It was scheduled for nine this morning, so Chloe had dropped him off at his place, so he could drive himself to his appointment and then to the precinct. He pulled on a shirt and grimaced as it brushed against the open wounds uncomfortably. He would have to get used to the pulling of the wounds and the scratch of the fabric. 

When he arrived at Linda’s office, the first thing he asked her was if she was sure she was well enough to be taking patients. She just told him she was and changed the subject. She asked him about the fact that he wanted to cut off his wings, and he told her that he’d finally done it with a proud smile on his face. She was worried about him, but he dismissed her worry. Then she asked him about the Detective and he told her that she knew. She’d seen his wings before he’d been able to get rid of them and she was adjusting. 

Linda was taken aback, but she asked him how he felt about it. He told her he had no idea but that she’d said they would have a talk. They hadn’t had it yet and he wanted to, he really did, but nothing was amiss in his relationship with the Detective.

“And that’s going well? Your relationship with Chloe and Trixie?” she asked. 

Lucifer considered the question before he spoke. “As well as it can, Doctor. Chloe has… when we sleep in the same bed she’s likes it when I don’t wear a shirt, and it baffles me sometimes.”

“You ‘sleep in the same bed’ but you haven’t _slept_ with her yet?” Linda asked him. 

“We’ve slept in the same bed often, but no I haven’t slept with her in that sense,” Lucifer told her. “The two of them are a bit worried, but I think this past weekend has made up for it. They we’re both fine leaving me this morning.” 

Linda told him that was good, and then she asked, “Do you want to talk about Trixie calling you ‘papa’?”

Lucifer looked down at his hands and adjusted his cuffs. “She’s… she just…” he sighed in frustration. “She was sick with a fever one day and Daniel wasn’t answering his phone… We picked her up and then the Detective took her home. She called me later and asked me to bring her some things and to see if I could help Beatrice. The poor darling was uncomfortable… she’d been telling the Detective that she wanted her ‘papa’ and she’d assumed that meant Dan. I had no idea she thought of me that way…” He smiled softly and looked up from his hands. “She doesn’t always call me that, only when she’d scared or worried…”

“And that’s… good?” Linda asked. 

“I never thought I’d be anything like that to anyone,” he started. “I don’t know what I am to the Detective, but I know that I want to keep them.” He chewed on the inside of his lip, something she’d never seen him do before. “I know that they aren’t mine, but I want them to be,” he whispered to her, like he was scared to say it out loud.

Abruptly, he stood and turned towards the door. He said he would see her later and then he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his inner jacket pocket and handed it to her. Telling her it was from Beatrice. He threw a ‘hope you feel better’ over his shoulder and when she opened the piece of paper, it was a drawing of her and Maze, with the neat handwriting of a little girl telling her to ‘feel better soon’. Linda smiled and put it in her desk drawer. 

×××

He thought he was free of them, was relieved over the next few days, but that night as he arrived home to his penthouse he was disturbed by his back aching. The Detective had been busy with paperwork, so he’d decided to hang around Ella’s lab for a while and listen to her prattle on about whatever it was she… had been doing. His back had been aching all day, and he undressed to get a better look at the wounds in the mirror, but before he could get there, before he could check them, his wings burst from his back. He was in a great deal of pain as they felt like they were being torn out of his shoulders. He was furious, and this time when he cut them off, he took a substantial amount of flesh with them. 

The next afternoon, the Detective asked him to come over and see Beatrice who had told her mother to ask the Devil if he wanted to come over for dinner. He did, of course, any excuse to see his Decker women. So he followed her home in his corvette because every time he shifted uncomfortably against the seat in her car she kept asking him if he wanted her to take a look. And he could only refuse her a certain number of times before she would demand to see what was wrong. He had to be careful around her, he couldn’t let her know what he was doing to himself because he knew he’d stop if she asked. And he knew that perhaps he should stop. A small part of him wanted to, it hurt so much more than it had the first time, but he wouldn’t. 

When he pulled up next to the Detective, she smiled at him and he followed her into the house. Trixie hugged her mother for a long moment and then she hugged Lucifer. One of her hands hit the edge of one of his wounds and he went breathless with the pain. He hugged her tighter and when he put her down he leaned against the counter for a moment. 

“Okay, seriously, Lucifer, are you okay?” Chloe asked him once Trixie had gone back to her drawing. “You looked like you were about to pass out…”

“I’m definitely not about to pass out,” he told her. He shifted into her space and placed a kiss to her forehead. “Nothing to worry about, alright?” he tipped her chin up to look at him and smiled at her. He didn’t want her to worry but he knew he couldn’t control that. 

She leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He brought an arm around her and tried not to grimace when it pulled at the edges of his wounds. After a long moment, the Detective went off to check Trixie’s homework and Lucifer started to make dinner. He was so focused on trying not to let his pain show on his face, that he missed the Detective coming up behind him. She put her hand on one of his shoulder blades and he almost cried out in pain. He managed to keep it to a violent flinch and felt her withdraw immediately. 

“Oh G- Lucifer, are you okay?” she asked him, panic coating her voice. She was more than worried now, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop gasping for breath. 

“Papa?” he heard Trixie ask him. She sounded scared and that was something he wouldn’t stand for.

“Just a bit sore,” he ground out. He turned the Detective and Beatrice, he didn’t want them to worry and he smiled at them. They were watching him like they didn’t believe him, and really he knew they wouldn’t, but a man could try.

He managed dinner with no further incidents, but there was a moment’s pause when they wanted him to join them on the couch. He sat and leaned back carefully, he knew Beatrice hadn’t noticed his sharp intake of breath, but Chloe had. He lifted his arm and offered her the space of his shoulder to lean on. He kept his arm out like that until she took her place against him. He knew she wanted to ask him what was wrong, wanted to help him, but on top of him not deserving that, never deserving that, he didn’t want her to know.

After they had put Beatrice to bed, for the first time in a long time he told the Detective that while he’d like to stay, he can’t tonight. She looked hurt, and he knew she had wanted to make sure he was okay. It nearly broke him in half to walk out the door. He sat in his corvette for a very long time, rubbing at the ache in his chest with the heel of his palm. He knew he couldn’t fix it himself, that the only thing that would stop it was back in the apartment he just left. He looked up to see her watching him from the window. With his heart being torn in two, he started his car. He left the pieces of it with her, always with her, never anywhere else. He knew he would never be able to do that again. He couldn’t leave her with that look on her face again. Her face was the only thing he could see on the drive home. He had never hated himself more than in that moment.

As soon as he exited the elevator, he screamed in pain as a new pair of wings burst from the wounds on his back. He deserved this pain, and as he picked up the demon’s blade again, he decided that he deserved that pain too.

The next day, he and the Detective had caught a case. A slightly high profile case, that had to do with puppets, and Lucifer wanted to rip all the puppets to pieces. He didn’t understand why the show was funny, until Chloe told him what it was originally about. They found out that the comedy club the threats were coming from was hosting an open mic night on Saturday, which was tomorrow. They decided that Dan would be the one to go up on stage. They just had to sign him up tomorrow and watch the crowd.

And every time he reached for something he flinched and as the day progressed it got worse, and Chloe had been getting more and more worried. The Lieutenant came to tell them to pack it up, because they were a little late in leaving, and he roughly smacked Lucifer right on the back, as if to encourage them to leave. Lucifer roared in pain and grabbed the Lieutenant’s arm as he spun himself around quickly. He was so close to crushing the other man’s arm in his grip, when Chloe placed her hand over his and asked him what was wrong with him. “He touched my back,” Lucifer growled, clearly in pain.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Chloe asked their new Lieutenant harshly. She managed to pry Lucifer’s fingers off of Pierce’s arm (who growled in pain like it actually was broken and knowing Lucifer’s strength it just might be) and walked him away from the other man. “Are you okay? And I swear to your Dad, Lucifer, if you tell me not to worry after that, I’m going to hit you over the head.” (And the fact that she was avoiding the G word even at a time like this… it meant a lot to him even though he knew she was struggling with the knowledge.)

“Just a little pain, darling,” he told her.

“’A little pain’, my ass,” she shot back with an eyeroll. “I’m bringing you home with me and I’m going to look at your back,” she told him with a hand on the side of his face, “and then we’re finally having that talk, okay?”

“Darling, it’s…” he started, but she gave him a look and he sighed. “Of course, my dear Detective. Whatever you’d like, darling…”

He followed her to her car and sat in silence as she fumed to herself. Tentatively, he reached his hand out to her and caressed the back of her fingers. He saw her sigh and loosen her grip from around the wheel. She twined their fingers together and he brought hers up to his lips to place a kiss on them. “I’m sorry, darling…” he whispered against the back of her hand.

She shook his hand off of hers and put it on the side of his face as they stopped at a red light. “I’m sorry for yelling,” she told him. “I’m just… I’m just worried…”

Someone honked behind them when the light turned green and Chloe started driving. They were silent for the rest of the drive and When they got home, Dan was waiting outside to pick up Trixie (It was his weekend, and he’d decided that he would see his daughter after the week before last when she had asked to go back to her mother’s because she missed Lucifer too much). They went in the door, Dan following them, and Trixie was more excited to see Lucifer than her own dad which he noticed made Dan frown. Trixie flew into Lucifer’s arms and hugged him around the neck. Chloe was busy trying to find the money she’d put in her wallet for the babysitter, so Lucifer just shifted Trixie to his hip and pulled out a large bill and handed it to the woman. The babysitter left, and Chloe made sure that Trixie was packed for her weekend with her dad. As soon as Trixie and Dan were out of the house, Chloe pinned Lucifer down with her stare. 

She went to him and gently pulled him upstairs. She led him to her room and pulled at his suit jacket until it fell to the floor. He gulped audibly as she started unbuttoning his shirt, and he really didn’t want her to see, but he did tell her that she could look. She started pulling that down, but it was stuck with dried blood from where Pierce had hit him and opened one of the large scabs. Her brow furrowed at the resistance and when he hissed in pain; he wanted to get this over with, wanted her to see how damaged he was and just throw him to the side like everyone else he’d ever met. He did the first thing that came to mind and tugged hard and fast at the shirt attached to his back. He couldn’t quite stifle his yelp of pain.

When he opened his eyes she was standing behind him, and he was too afraid to look at her. She sobbed his name once and looked over his shoulder to see her with tears streaming down her face. He looked down in shame, he knew she was going to leave him then. She was going to realize that he was too much, too damaged, too… monstrous.

He was surprised when she just touched his arm gently. She was trying to breathe through her tears and she turned him to her. “Lucifer, what… what happened to you?” she sobbed. His whole face contorted, and he just stared at her. “Lucifer, just… Babe, tell me what happened…”

He grasped her hand and pulled her to him to wipe away her tears. “Darling it’s… you don’t need to worry, love, I’ve-”

“Don’t tell me not to worry about you when you have huge open wounds on your back! Don’t you dare tell me not to worry about you, Lucifer!” she screamed at him. When she felt him flinch, she shook her head frantically and told him gently, a hand to his face, “No, I’m-! I’m sorry, Lucifer, I didn’t mean to yell at you, I just… I’m scared, and worried and… Lucifer, they look… they look so bad…”

He stared at her, like he didn’t quite understand what this meant. “I… I cut my wings off,” he told her softly. He watched her face change as if it were in slow motion. It looked like it crumpled under a large weight and she made a distressed noise in the back of her throat. She wrapped her arms around him, slung low around his waist. She cried into his chest for a long while and he finally brought his arms up to hug her closer. “It’s alright, my dearest darling,” he whispered into her hair, “they just keep coming back and I have to keep cutting them off. It’s nothing to worry about, love…”

She pulled away from him and just stared at him like she didn’t understand what he was saying, what the words coming out of his mouth meant. “You keep…” she started, and then more tears slid down her face and Lucifer panicked briefly. “Lucifer, you… I need you to promise me that you won’t hurt yourself again…” she whispered to him. She brought her hands up to his neck and gently wound the fingers of one of her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Please, Lucifer, please promise me…”

He rested his forehead on hers and managed to promise her in a thick, raw voice that he wouldn’t do it again. He was still waiting for her to throw him out, to dismiss him now that she knew the extent of his hurts. Instead, she led him to the bed and laid him down on his stomach. She placed a kiss to the side of his head and told him to relax, that she was going to get a wash cloth and some warm water. She only stopped to ask him if mixing a little hydrogen peroxide into the water would hurt him. It wouldn’t, and he told her so. There was a long moment of his slow breathing in the room while he listened to Chloe rummage around downstairs for what she needed.

He listened to her return and set her supplies on the bedside table. He was ashamed that she’d seen him, and he wasn’t sure what she was doing. “I could do that, darling,” he told her softly, “I just need to shower, and I’ll be good as new…”

She shook her head at him and ran her fingers through his hair. “Let me take care of you,” she told him. Her tears where gone and she was treating him softer than she ever had before. Her hands were almost reverent as they slipped over his neck and the tops of his shoulders. She warned him in a whisper when she was about to start, and he couldn’t help the gasp of pain that escaped him as she laid the warm washcloth on his wounds. She hushed him and ran her fingers through his hair, apologizing for hurting him even though she didn’t mean to and he- He didn’t know what to do with himself. He felt his eyes well up and blinked a few times. 

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” she asked when she noticed the tears in his eyes.

“No…” he replied thickly, heart in his throat. “No, I…” He buried his face in the pillow and tried to stifle a sob. He heard Chloe hush him again and shook his head violently against her pillow. She just hushed him again and told him to take his time, that she would be right here when he was ready and he… he just sobbed again and… he… he just wanted her to hold him… He turned his face back to her and just looked at her, tears in his eyes. 

She leaned down and kissed the side of his head again. She finished eventually, calming him with soft hands and even softer words. She treated him like he was the most precious thing she’d ever possessed. And he was hers even if she didn’t know it. He watched her put the blood soaked washcloth into the bowl of water. When his eyes met hers, she smiled at him like he was good and important, and he had to look away again to hide his tears. 

“Lucifer, can you sit up for me? I want to talk with you,” her voice was still soft and every time she touched him her fingers and hands were featherlight, like he was the human and she could break him if she used too much pressure. He sat up quickly, knowing this was the moment she turned him away, told him that he was too much trouble. He knew she caught his grimace of pain as he did it, and he sat cross-legged in front of her on the bed. She scooted onto the bed, so that her knees were pressed to his, and said, “I’m not mad at you, Lucifer, I want you to know that.” He nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “We haven’t really talked since you,” she motioned with her arms, to mime something sprouting out of her back and he just stared at her. “But I want you to know, it doesn’t change anything for me, okay? That you’re still you, and that doesn’t change how much I care about you…”

His face twisted, and he nodded, trying to keep his emotions inside of him. He didn’t quite understand, but he thought he did a little. He just didn’t know _why_ she cared about him. He still didn’t want to look at her, couldn’t bring himself to. 

“Lucifer… why were you hurting yourself like that?” she asked him, her hand coming to rest, featherlight, on his cheek, barely rasping against his stubble. “That’s not…” and here she began crying again, “it’s not healthy, babe, and I… I know I don’t control you, but please, don’t… don’t do it again, Lucifer, I can’t…”

He rested his head against hers and told her, “I’ve already promised you, dearest darling. Never again, I give you my word.”

“Why, babe? I just want to understand,” she told him, tears flowing freely, and it was causing him a great deal of stress, her crying like that. He whined in the back of his throat and wiped away some of her tears. She bit her lip and stared into his eyes.

“I…” his throat closed up, and he cleared his throat to start again. “My Father gave them to us, as a symbol of our devotion, our service…” he grit out past the lump in his throat. “I am not and never will be in my Father’s service ever again. The fact that he’s trying to force it upon me will not change that!” He looked away from her, still unsure she wanted him. “I… I don’t want them,” he told her, his voice small and broken.

“Are you okay with me knowing?” she asked him. 

He nodded quickly, face pressed firmly into her palm. He placed kisses there and she let him. Soon he was nuzzling his nose at her wrist and he clenched his fists in his lap. He couldn’t stop himself now, he needed her too badly, he had to ask her. He wet his lips nervously braced himself for a negative answer as he asked, “Darling, will you… can I… will you hold me?”

“Of course I will, Lucifer,” she told him, and as tenderly as she would her own daughter, she brought him into her arms, leaning back against the headrest so that his head was pillowed on her shoulder. She buried a hand in his hair, and he whimpered. She hushed him and kissed his forehead, with her other hand, she grabbed one of his and slipped under her shirt. He pressed it against the hot skin of her side and shivered as the hand she kept in his hair scraped at his scalp lightly. He was shaking and whimpering against her. She had a never-ending supply of kisses to bestow to his forehead, and eventually he felt himself falling into sleep against his will. He must have made a sound or an aborted movement of some kind, because the last thing he remembered was Chloe telling him that it was okay, that she was with him.

He woke later, the room completely dark, with his head still pillowed on her shoulder (and Chloe asleep, looking like she was sent from the Silver City just for him, and that… that was divine… more divine than anything in the Silver City). His wings were back he could tell. He didn’t want them, he wanted them gone again. But he’d promised her, and she was still here. She hadn’t cast him aside, she told him she was worried about him… He knew he wasn’t worth it, worth anything really, but she seemed to think he was. So for her, for her he would try.

In the morning, they went to work after stopping by Lucifer’s place to get him a fresh suit. They couldn’t do much, but they could go over what they knew, and plan exactly what they were going to ask this suspect. Dan arrived at 6pm, hopefully he’d left Beatrice with a proper babysitter, and they prepared him for his role. 

When they got there, they set Daniel up back stage and got seats in the back. They waited until after the show, which, of course, Lucifer had to hijack. And he brought a few tomatoes along with him, which made Chloe double take (where the hell had he gotten them?), and somehow managed to hit Daniel squarely each time (once, in the face and Chloe had to work so hard to keep from laughing, because it was funnier than it should’ve been). But they got their suspect and swiftly dismissed him, and it was late, but the information they were given was enough for a small lead, another angle. So as soon as they arrested someone (a woman named Shelia who wanted to keep her job and get noticed as a comedian), they went home. It was rather late and the two of them were still emotionally exhausted from the night before. 

They ended up at the Detective’s apartment sat on the couch. Lucifer had his arm around Chloe’s shoulders and his shoeless feet were resting on the corner on the coffee table. She was tucked against him with a glass of wine in one of her hands. Occasionally, Lucifer would nuzzle her hair with his nose and place gentle kisses there. There was nothing better to him, being here with her. They were just sitting there, soaking in each other’s presence, using soft caresses to tell each other how content they were. They had each other, the only thing that would make this night more relaxing, more fulfilling, would be Trixie’s presence.

×××

Lucifer watched as Chloe left the bullpen. There were tight lines around her eyes and he knew she was upset. Even he was upset at what humans could do to each other, especially what humans could do to their children. He knew that the Detective had been struggling with this case, that she’d seen Beatrice in their victim (so had he, and that was more painful than he’d ever thought it would be, just having Beatrice’s face superimposed over this child’s). There was nothing they could do but catch the bastard that did it, and they’d done that. 

He could tell that the Detective needed more to heal from this. That she would need him and Beatrice. He needed them too, but he could wait. Her needs were far more important than his and he was prepared to do whatever it took. So, as soon as she would let him practically bundle her into the car, he did. They drove in silence to her apartment and this time, she was the one to grab his hand. She held it tight and brought it to rest against the side of her face. In that moment, he wanted to hold her and never let go. He settled for a soft caress of her hand. 

They got to her apartment and she rushed through the door, gathering her little monkey in her arms. Lucifer saw the babysitter off and turned to his girls. Beatrice was hugging her mother but seemed concerned for her. She met his eyes and frowned, holding out an arm to him as well. He enveloped them both into his arms and placed kisses on the top of their heads. After a few moments, he ushered them over to the couch and wrapped them both in the biggest blanket they had. 

“Are you okay, Mom?” Trixie asked. She still hadn’t let go of her mother’s neck. 

“Just a little sad, Monkey,” Chloe said tearfully. “Our case was a little sad.”

Lucifer was bustling around the kitchen, even though he wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch with them and never let them go. He knew that sometimes after a difficult case the Detective would make herself some hot chocolate no matter how hot it was outside, so he made some for both her and Beatrice. He watched the little girl hug her mother and tell her how her day was in a soft whisper. He cared for them so deeply, that sometimes, when he least expected it, he would be overcome by the emotion. He would do absolutely anything for them, but he would never be able to stay away from them. He was immensely glad that the Detective hadn’t pushed him away when she’d found out who he really was. He owed her so much and could only hope that their- her daughter would think of him the same way if she ever found out. 

He snapped out of his thoughts and brought them their cocoa. Chloe gave him the sweetest smile, and he could tell that it made Beatrice feel better to see her mother smile. So he gave into his desires and cuddled into them, holding them close. 

“Where’s your cocoa, Lucifer?” Beatrice asked, a small pout on her face. 

Lucifer smirked. “I’ll share with mum, dear heart,” he reached towards the Detective’s drink playfully and chuckled as she pulled it out of his reach. She made a noise of protest and he pulled her to him so that her back was against his chest. He pressed his nose into her cheek when she turned her head toward him, and he asked her in a whisper if she needed anything else, anything at all. 

“Just you,” she told him in a whisper, and she reached back and caressed his cheek. Trixie pulled herself closer to them and cuddled in for a long hug. He knew she meant both him and Trixie, but when she’d touched his cheek, his breath had caught. He held them tighter and marveled at how Chloe settled deeper into him. It was like she cared for him as much as he did for her, and that was… the thought was so bittersweet that it almost broke him in half. She couldn’t care for him like that, he knew. He wasn’t worth it, and he knew that she knew that too.

They sat there, huddled together on the couch, just talking softly and keeping each other company. Chloe fell asleep which was a little out of character, and Trixie looked worried until Lucifer pulled her up from the couch and told her, “Mum’s just tired, little love. She worked very hard the last few days, and it was very emotional for her….”

“For you, too?” she asked. When he just looked at her confused, she added, “You look sad too…”

“The case was… difficult, dearest heart,” he told her. He sat her on the counter, and stood in front of her, like he wasn’t sure how he could get the little furrow out of her brow. 

“Mommy said yesterday that it was about a little girl…” Trixie told him, she was frowning deeper like she was worried for the victim and her mother. 

Lucifer didn’t want to give her nightmares, and he wasn’t sure how much he could tell her, but if the Detective had mentioned that… “There was…” he sighed and tried again, “A child got very hurt, Beatrice… and Me and Mum had to… stop the man that did it.”

“But you got him?” she asked, looking for confirmation more than asking a question. When he nodded, she smiled and told him, “Good. He shouldn’t be hurting people.”

He offered her a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes the way he meant for it to. “No, he shouldn’t have. And thanks to your mother, he’ll never do it again.” He placed a kiss on her forehead and asked when she wanted for dinner.

Instead of answering, she pulled him toward her and wrapped her arms around her neck. “Did you want a long hug like mommy did when she got home? Because the little girl got hurt and you couldn’t stop it?” she whispered into his ear. 

He froze, but after a moment of indecision he pulled her into his arms again. He knew that if he held her for much longer then he’d never put her down, so after a long moment, he set her down on the counter. He asked her again what she would like for dinner, and this time she gave him an answer (making sure Lucifer knew that Chloe’s comfort food was mac and cheese, which he’d known from one of their many stakeout talks). So he planned dinner accordingly, with Beatrice as his helper. 

Chloe woke up to see them whispering in the kitchen, she shuffled over to them and hugged Lucifer around the middle from behind. She was still sort of trapped in the fog of sleep, but she knew she wanted to be with her family, and her family was in the kitchen. She buried her nose between her shoulder blades and squeezed him until he made a noise like she’d squeezed him too tight. He didn’t complain, he never did, seemed happy to just have them near him, but she loosened her hold anyway. She wanted him to be comfortable and happy with them, not just there because he felt that he needed to be. She took a deep breath and breathed him in. She loved how he smelled. It was always soothing to her and she needed that now, almost as much as she’d needed to hug her daughter when she’d gotten home earlier.

She wanted him to hug her back and knew he was busy with dinner, so she patiently waited until he was done (if the definition of patience was squeezing him tightly every so often so he wouldn’t forget she was there). So she waited, and before long, he pulled her around to his front and wrapped her in a hug. She closed her eyes and buried her face in his chest, more than happy with this choice.

“Feel better, my darling?” he whispered into her hair. She just nodded against him and settled deeper into him. He unwrapped an arm from around her to lift Trixie off of the counter and set her on the ground. “Get some bowls, dearest heart, it’s dinner time.”

“What are we having?” Chloe asked, pulling back a little, but her arms were still wrapped around his waist.

“Homemade mac and cheese!” Trixie cheered. 

Chloe was floored. The last person who had made her homemade macaroni and cheese was her dad. She felt like… she felt like he really cared about her (Dan had never made her homemade mac and cheese, only from a box… and this… this was just…). She felt tears well up in her eyes, and she buried her face in his chest to hide them. He’d noticed, of course, but he just held her until she pulled away from him. Her eyes were still watery, and she was sniffling as she pulled back. 

“Thank you,” she told him. She wiped her tears away and let him show her to the table. She knew he had absolutely no idea why she was crying, he probably thought she was upset with him until she’d thanked him. She spent the rest of dinner staring at him, a soft smile on her face, and an even softer something in her eyes.

After Trixie had been put to bed and he was reluctantly on his way out the door, she placed a kiss to his cheek, lingering as was her way now, and thanked him again for dinner. He smiled back at her and it was a little sad, not his usual softness. She wanted to pull him up to her room and wrap herself around him until he stopped smiling at her like his heart was being slowly extracted. She asked him for the fifth time if he was sure he couldn’t stay, if he was sure he was okay (“…and you’re sure you feel okay after that case? It was really difficult, Lucifer, for the both of us, and if you need to… if you need someone, I’m here…”). So he finally told her that, yes he would stay. He knew as much as she did that they needed each other, so he let her lead him to her bedroom. 

They didn’t sleep as peacefully as they normally did when they were together like this, but they still slept. Something they both knew they wouldn’t have gotten if they’d been apart. They were just glad they’d been granted the next two days off. The could be together and with Trixie for those two whole days. They could heal from this.

×××

Lucifer spent as much time as he could with them, and even if Dan had Trixie, he spent time with the Detective. They were always together and almost never apart, only occasionally when he’d had to stay late at Lux and didn’t want to wake her by coming home at four in the morning. He did make appearances at Lux, playing the piano and doing his usual circuits, but he always went back to the Detective. The nights he stayed the longest were the ones he managed to convince her to come with him. He rarely left her side on those nights, once, he’d convinced her to sit at the piano with him. He’d played her a song, soulful and slow, and she’d had tears in her eyes by the time he’d finished. He’d only had eyes for her and had kissed her forehead when he was done (He’d walked to the bar to get a refill on their drinks and when he’d returned, he had a look on his face like he was confused, but when he saw her again, when his eyes met hers, it cleared, and he was only happy).

She’d let him take her to Lux again this week, but only because it was her birthday, and he’d promised to let the girls drink free. He would have let them anyway, he told her, but she just smirked at him and he was done for (he’d give her anything if only she asked, he wanted to make it so that she would never want for anything, neither her nor her daughter). So, he’d told the girls to come to Lux, and made sure that they had a table reserved for them. The table closest to the piano, and he was going back and forth on singing for her. He knew he would never sing happy birthday for her, much to cliché, though Trixie had asked him to teach her how to play it for her (she’d loved it, had kissed her daughter all over her face and looked at him, that happiness shining like the clouds used to in the silver city before he’d realized the truth, before they’d lost their luster). Then she’d brought Trixie to Dan’s and told him that she’d be back later with the girls. 

The night was just starting, and he was fretting over the table and the placement when they showed up. Immediately, he lit up and he gave them all cursory kisses on the cheeks. Except the detective. With her, he tucked her into his arms, placed a soft kiss to her cheek, and whispered a ‘happy birthday, darling,’ into her hair. He only pulled back when Ella squealed and said that they were ‘the cutest thing’.

He kept to himself for the most part, doing his rounds and occasionally playing songs on the piano. He would check on them periodically, just to make sure they were still getting free drinks and that they had everything they could ever ask for. He did settle down at their table for a while when Chloe had asked him to. There hadn’t been much room, but she had decided that she would just sit in his lap, which was… well, he got to touch her, to spend time with her, so it was alright with him. 

She settled into his lap and Ella made a comment which made them all collapse with laughter, and maybe, just maybe, he was a little in over his head here. But he just focused on Chloe and what she wanted, so when she turned sideways in his lap and put her arm around his shoulders, he banded one of his around her waist. She placed a kiss to his cheek and thanked him for letting her spend her birthday here. Ella decided that they were “the most adorable couple she’d ever seen” and decided she wanted a picture with the group. Lucifer had offered to take it, but Ella said no and got one of the club goers standing nearby to do it. 

The man took their picture, wished Chloe a happy birthday, and then asked her if he could buy her a drink. Lucifer’s arm tightened around her minutely and he felt her arm tighten around his shoulder. “Thank you, but no,” she said, and then her other hand slipped down to his chest, fingering the first button on his shirt. Lucifer looked at the side of her face, more than positive that he looked like an absolute idiot, just staring at her like she was the sun and he wasn’t worthy of her, never would be worthy of her. The guy seemed to get the message, when Lucifer, not really paying attention to what he was doing, pulled her even more into his lap and nuzzled at the underside of her jaw with his nose. She threaded her hand into the hair at the nape of his neck and watched as the other man walked away. Lucifer breathed in the scent of her skin and it took everything in him not to taste her there.

“Get a room, Decker,” Maze’s voice interrupted them. Or it would have if they’d pulled away from each other, instead, Chloe just stared at them, not really comprehending what was wrong with the situation. She and Lucifer had grown closer and closer, and sometimes they just sat like this (not exactly like this, she usually wasn’t in his lap, but he was starting to like it, like this, her in his arms closer than she usually was and… he could get used to this, he really could…) and were close to each other. It was usually in the privacy of her home or his and usually only around Trixie. They were always touching these days.

So he stayed where he was, nose buried in her neck because it seemed like she was as reluctant to pull away from him as he was from her. He wasn’t listening to the conversation, but he was aware that it was happening around him. He felt her voice more than he heard her, and he huffed a breath out of his nose, accidentally making her shiver. Reluctantly, he pulled back and turned his attention to the other people at the table. He offered to get them drinks, but Ella told him that Maze had gone to get them. 

Linda was talking to Chloe, he wasn’t sure what about, but with her fingers caressing the back of his head, her nails scraping lightly at his scalp, he couldn’t be bothered to listen. He heard his name leave her lips, but he didn’t really react beyond leaning in and placing a kiss to her cheek and leaning back in his seat a little. Chloe pulled back a little and looked into his eyes, asking him silently if he was okay. He offered her a smile to tell her he was fine and pulled her more into his lap than she already was. She pressed a kiss to his forehead as she listened to Linda’s reply. 

Much too soon for Lucifer, one of his employees came around to speak with him about an issue that popped up. Someone getting much too drunk and almost causing a scene, so he had to leave his Detective and take care of it. Before he left them, he told them that if they didn’t want to uber home, they had full access to his penthouse.

By the time he’d dealt with the unruly patron, it was a lot later than he wanted it to be. He had hoped to catch them once more, but perhaps it was time for him to retire. So he headed upstairs and saw Ella and Linda on the couches not quite asleep but wearing things the Detective had left. He assumed that Maze was either in the room she used to stay in or had found someone to go home with. He went to his room to see Chloe sat up in bed on her phone. She was wearing one of his dress shirts, one that he’d already worn if he wasn’t mistaken (and he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. He can remember everything from every moment he’d ever been awake for). She looked up when he made a sound at the doorway and her smile at him was just… She was absolute perfection.

He smiled at her and she held out her hand to him, beckoning her closer. He stopped off at the safe under the painting on the wall and typed in the code. She was watching him and the pleasant surprise that crossed her face was… he loved it. He sat by her hip in the bed and handed her the small box. “Happy birthday, my dearest darling,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her hair. He went to change, and when he came back dressed in his silk pajama pants, she was sitting on the bed and holding the necklace he’d had made for her out in front of her face. 

“It’s beautiful,” she told him as he settled next to her in bed. “What is it?” she asked, and she was probably still kind of drunk, and he just smiled at her, because drunk Chloe was one of the cutest Chloes there could ever be.

“It’s the bullet,” he told her, “from when you shot me… do you remember?” Her face cleared, and she looked at him like she… well, like she cared for him at the very least. She told him she remembered he grinned at her. He made a joke about that “commemorating the first time she’d ever penetrated” him, and her uninhibited giggle made him beam. 

“Come here,” she told him, holding out her arms. He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. What he wanted to do, what he’d been wanting to do since earlier that night, was slide his nose along the line of her jaw and taste the skin there. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t… but he wanted to. So he hugged her close and breathed in the scent of her. 

The next morning, he woke early and shifted out of the Detective’s grasp. He knew they would want breakfast, or need it, rather. So he went to make it and greeted the girls as they each walked into the kitchen. The Detective was last, coming into the room only when he’d turned the coffee maker on, and ignoring everyone who wished her good morning to wrap her arms around him from behind as she did most mornings when he made breakfast. They ignored the looks and the comments (made mostly by Ella) and Chloe just squeezed him tighter around the waist as she did every morning until he gave her the hug she was waiting for. 

(They ignored Ella again as she told them how cute they were, how they looked like they were a couple, and “Are you sure you guys aren’t dating? Because it seems like you’re dating…” And they just decided to be themselves, as they usually were with only her daughter as an audience. And if Lucifer’s smiles were a little softer, well, that was because he was tired, and not at all because that just happened around Chloe in the mornings.)

×××

The Sinnerman situation was something Lucifer wanted to deal with, but also knew that if he did deal with it, Chloe would be dragged into it. That was the absolute last thing he wanted to happen. He wanted to tell her it would be his thing, not hers, wanted to bring it up, but knew she would insist on helping him. 

The last time he’s mentioned the Sinnerman in the precinct, Pierce had told him not to talk about it. Although, the way he’d looked at Pierce had caused the man to look down and walk away. Something about the Lieutenant just rubbed him the wrong way, and when he’s told him in confidence that the Sinnerman killed his brother it sounded like the truth, but it also held a note of confession… He just didn’t quite know why.

But, when Pierce cornered him in his penthouse one day, and confessed to being the actual biblical Cain, well, he knew then. Pierce was the Sinnerman, and he knew that the other man was expecting him to keep it to himself, or not be able to put it together, but… this was important… this effected the Detective in more ways than one. He knew she held a certain respect for her superiors, but this… he couldn’t let her put her trust in the leader of a criminal organization. 

So, one day, on her day off and while Trixie was at school, he took her out to lunch and he told her what he knew. She knew to take him at his word, and after they spoke, she knew why he’d taken her to a semi-noisy restaurant at a busy time. It was in case Pierce had ears on them. He knew that she wouldn’t want to endanger her daughter, but he was also aware, that she would want to stop the bastard. They decided then and there to investigate, but to do it covertly and to try not to involve anyone else. They didn’t want their friends and family to be caught in the middle, but they had decided to let Maze, Amenadiel, and Linda know about it. Maze, so that when she was watching Trixie, she would be aware of the danger, Amenadiel because he was a celestial and should probably know, and Linda because she was Lucifer’s therapist and not really involved in the police work, and his sessions were under the patient confidentiality agreement most therapists abided by. 

They would need to do this delicately and quickly. Lucifer just hoped they could be careful too. That no one, especially Beatrice and Chloe, would get hurt. He would do his best to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

×××

In between gathering solid evidence and secret meetings at her home, they still managed to be a family without alerting anyone to their actions. Still spending time with Trixie and each other and still managing to become closer and closer. The fact that they were working so closely in secret, brought them closer than they otherwise would be. They decided that at the beginning, that Pierce, Cain, was trying to manipulate him by telling him the truth, but they couldn’t really see how. Until Chloe noticed that the man kept making comments and giving orders and compliments meant to divide them. 

She mentioned this to Lucifer one night as they shared a drink after putting Trixie to bed. They were sitting on the couch, close to each other, almost in each other’s laps, and she told him how she thought that Pierce’s comments were meant to divide them.

“Well, we shouldn’t let him,” he’d said plainly. He pulled her to him so that she was in his lap and he hugged her close.

“So we won’t,” Chloe said, and she rested her head on his chest.

The next morning, they went into the precinct, wary of others and really only trusting of each other (and perhaps Ella). There was nothing unusual about their closeness, but they knew Ella and Dan were staring at them weirdly. 

“Okay,” Ella started, after dragging Chloe into the lab, “you guys are acting weird and why did you guys walk in together this morning?” She winked at her and asked, “Did you guys spend the night together?”

“Lucifer stayed over at mine, Ella,” Chloe told her. She didn’t blush, too used to the two of them spending the night together for it to be embarrassing. When Ella grinned like she was about to tell them ‘congratulations on the fantastic sex’, Chloe continued, “Nothing happened.”

Ella’s shoulders drooped, like she’d been given bad news, but she bounced back quickly. “So, we have new evidence on our suspect! It’s a partial print and maybe some DNA, at least it doesn’t match the vic’s, so we’ll see where that gets us.”

“Thanks, Ella, keep us posted,” Chloe told her. She walked back out to the bullpen to see Lucifer standing at her desk and Pierce in his office glaring at each other through the glass wall. Well, Lucifer wasn’t glaring as much as he was watching the other man like he was about to devour him, and not sexually, but in a violent sort of way. Marcus was trying to glare, but he couldn’t quite stop the uneasy expression from reaching his face. Chloe walked up to Lucifer and lightly touched his arm as she sat at her desk. Lucifer just smoothed a hand over her hair and rested it on her shoulder like he was trying to comfort her or himself. She hoped that they were doing the right thing. That this wouldn’t blow up in their faces.

So they did what they could, and then later that night they went to her house like they usually did. Trixie was with them for the week and the weekend, so they were more than happy to go home as soon as they could. They spent as much time with her as they could, and they noticed that she was doing even better in school and not having as many nightmares anymore. He was proud of her in a way he’d only ever been proud of the Detective, which was why to celebrate, he wondered if they’d like to go to _Mike’s_. So they did, and Lucifer hadn’t meant to brag about the Spawn’s grades, but really, he just. He was _proud_ of her (she’d shown him her progress report when they’d gotten home and he just… _He was proud of her_ , and there was another emotion there, but he didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what to call it). 

For desert he ordered them chocolate cake and ice cream and Chloe just shook her head fondly at him. And he knew it was a fond smile because she smiled at him when she did it. When they got home that night, Beatrice hugged him around the neck and thanked him for the celebration even though it was a school night. 

When she went to bed, he and the Detective started looking for evidence, him calling in favors and her looking through paperwork and sending emails to the ones who worked for Pierce in Chicago to see if anything added up. They seemed to gather that any real ‘Sinnerman’ presence in Los Angeles had started right around Pierce’s arrival. It wasn’t much, but Chloe was trying to find if the same was true about Chicago. And they wanted to know where Ella had heard what she’d heard, and why it differed so much from the truth, but then again, it was Ella and she always chose to see the best in everyone. They knew that they may not get much, if anything at all, but they had to try. Lucifer because he wanted justice for all the murders and his kidnapping, and Chloe because it was the right thing to do. 

This would be the biggest case they’d ever worked, but it was also the most dangerous. Lucifer was always on edge, alert nearly all the time, especially when they were in Chloe’s home. He felt like they were always being watched, and he was wary of talking too loudly. He hadn’t mentioned his fears to the Detective, but he could tell she was thinking along similar lines. He knew that she really only slept soundly when he was with her. He was there most nights, so she could sleep, and he didn’t need as much sleep as humans did. 

Tonight was no exception, and when the hour became late and she began nodding off, he carried her to bed. He knew that she looked forward to this, to being taken care of, as long as she was allowed to take care of him too. He had learned that with the Detective it was better to let her have her way. Not that he could ever say no to her, but she kept asking him about whether or not _he_ was alright and if he had everything he needed. Someone caring about him was unusual to begin with, but the almost aggressive air she went about it with when he tried to dismiss his needs was… well, it was touching.

These past few weeks he’d spent most of his nights watching over the two people he’d come to think of as family. He’d felt a great sense of dread ever since Pierce had told him who he really was, and he had been on edge ever since. He knew that Chloe and Beatrice could sense his mood. He knew that they knew he’d been more reserved than usual. He just hoped that he was being paranoid, that nothing was going to happen and that he was acting crazy.

Somehow he knew that that wasn’t the case…

(In fact, he was so worried that he told Beatrice one night when her mother was distracted that if she were ever in trouble that all she had to do was pray to him with her whole heart and he would come to her, he would save her. He even pinky promised her that he would. He’d kept that particular conversation from the Detective. He hadn’t wanted her to worry and she was doing too much of that at the moment to have to deal with his paranoia.)

×××

She was still in shock. There were officers surrounding her and she felt Dan pacing somewhere to her left. She hadn't been aware that he was there for a while until he had touched her and she almost body slammed him in surprise. He hadn't touched her since (which was good, because she might kill him if he did).

“Decker,” she looked up to see Detective Ruiz softly shake her head and tried to keep her breathing steady. She was saying something, but Chloe couldn't hear what it was. She was too worried that someone here, one of the cops were dirty and working with Pierce. She might be acting paranoid, but she felt it in her gut. She was worried, and she wanted her daughter. Suddenly, there were too many people surrounding her and the only one she wanted hadn't been called, she realized suddenly. 

“I need Lucifer,” she said aloud. Dan's head snapped in her direction when she spoke for the first time since they heard the news. She had been at work (no cases, just paperwork upon paperwork) and Trixie had been taken from her school earlier that day, because Dan had been very, very late getting there and had forgotten to call the school to let them know. They were told that there had been a struggle, and there were a lot of witnesses, but she hadn't been found yet. 

She grabbed her phone and dialed his number, so familiar that even as numb as she was, she still knew it by heart. When he answered, cheerful, her tears started. “Detective?” she heard him ask worriedly when she took too long to respond.

“Someone took Trixie,” she sobbed. She heard him tell her that he would be there soon, and that's all she needed. She stayed on the phone, listening to him talk. His voice was soothing, and her sobs tapered off into sniffles. She was over her shock and trying to pull herself together.

When he walked through the precinct doors, he made a beeline for her, and she practically collapsed into his arms, sobs starting anew. “It'll be alright, darling. We'll find her,” he told her. For the first time that day, she believed it. 

×××

Lucifer was furious. He’d known that something like this was going to happen and he- He was beyond furious. He had texted Maze when he left the penthouse, but he hadn't heard back. She was busy, unavailable, which meant he was going to be doing this on his own.

He made sure that the Detective was taken care of before he left. She had fallen asleep against him (Dan watched them with an almost murderous expression). He left her on the couch in the breakroom with a promise to find her daughter, no matter what (“I'll find her even if I have to tear the entire world apart, darling, I promise.”) and a gentle kiss to the forehead.

He had asked the lead detective what they had, but there were nothing but dead ends (the only semi-useful information they had was that it was a child slavery ring or something of the sort, abductions all over the city for weeks). He would have to do this on his own and hope that no one asked too many questions.

He was about to fly down to Hell and retrieve a hellhound (the only way he knew that he would find her quickly; he couldn't stand the thought of her in harm's way, and she'd been there far too long already), when he heard it. A prayer to him from Beatrice Decker, just like he’d made her promise to do if she were ever in trouble.

_Lucifer… Lucifer, I'm scared, and in trouble and I need your help! Please, I'm really, really scared! And you promised you'd protect me! You promised! Please help me!_

It had ended with a sob and his heart ached at the sound, but he knew where she was now. He wanted to let her know he was on his way, but there wasn't time and he didn't know if she'd hear him. Instead, he opened his wings and disappeared from sight. 

When he reappeared on the mortal plane, he was outside an abandoned warehouse. Stealthily, he made his way in. In large cages there were children, aged about 8 to 14, lining the room he walked into. He saw Beatrice tied to a chair, fat tears rolling silently down her cheeks, as three men stood around her talking. 

“You didn't have to hit her, Greg,” Baldy said. 

Lucifer twitched with rage, it slowly seeped from his pores and into the room, stifling everything it came in contact with. The children in the room sank slowly into silence. The men grew agitated and seemed to shrink into themselves. They had no guns, (why would they need guns if they were untraceable and children could be scared in other ways) not that they would do them any good.

“She shut the fuck up, didn't she?” Greg replied. Lucifer’s eyes locked on the man and he stepped into the light, with an inhuman growl. If he hadn't known that it was him making the noise, he would've thought it to be a hellhound.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” Not-Greg asked fearfully, just as Beatrice shouted his name in relief (“Lucifer!” it was more of a sob than anything else, but her relief was palpable).

Lucifer's manic, sinister grin made all the men cower and his reply was almost lost in another growl, “Hell!”

He shot forward, grabbing ‘Greg’ by the throat. As the man struggled to breathe, Lucifer snarled in his face, “How dare you harm my daughter?! How dare you take what's mine?!” 

He wanted to beat the men into pulp, but his first priority was Beatrice. He knocked them out effortlessly, binding them tightly to each other to deal with later. Sodding humans, harming those he protects, he should torture them, bring them to their knees and make them beg for death.

He heard Beatrice sob his name and immediately rushed to her, breaking her ropes with a sharp pull. She threw her arms around his neck and started sobbing in earnest. His heart breaking with the sound, he hushed her and rubbed her back. “I've got you, little love, it's alright… Come now, my dearest heart, you're safe. I promise, little one, they’ll not hurt you again…” 

He continued along that line of comfort, pausing his soothing back rub to unlock the cages holding the children with a touch of his hand every once in a while. Eventually though, Beatrice calmed, but he didn't stop swaying in place comfortingly as he pulled out his phone and dialed the Detective.

She answered after two rings, intently asking where he was and if he knew anything and telling him that she needed him (tears saturated her voice and he felt it tear at him like claws). Before she could get any further, he interrupted, “I've got Beatrice, darling, she's safe, I promise.” He heard her sob in relief and told her to get Ella to track his phone, because he's not quite sure where they were. He told her to bring a lot of ambulances. “She's fine, darling! One of them hit her though, and I haven't even begun punishing him yet,” he ended in a growl. At her gasp, he reassured her, “Barely a bruise, love… I give you my word. There's a lot of other children here, though.”

They only had to wait 15 more minutes for the ambulances to arrive along with the first police officers. The children got first priority. Beatrice refused to be put down or let go of his neck, so they checked her out best they could. They gave her an ice pack for her face, and as he stood with her in his arms, rubbing her back soothingly and finishing up giving his statement, he heard the Detective shouting for her daughter.

“Detective!” he said loudly, she turned in his direction immediately and ran towards him.

“Oh, baby,” she said to her daughter, tears running down her face.

“Mommy!” Beatrice sobbed, and still clinging to Lucifer, she wrapped an arm around her mother's neck as well. “Mommy, I was so scared! Lucifer saved me like he promised he would!” she told the Detective in between her sobs. 

Chloe sobbed along with her, and Lucifer managed to shift Beatrice into Chloe’s arms and hugged the both of them close. He placed light, gentle kisses on each of their heads, and tried to comfort them with soft, soothing words.

Dan broke through the crowd a few minutes later, shouting, “Trixie!”

Lucifer pulled away, knowing Dan would want to hold his family, but Beatrice shouted for him in a panic (“Papa!” her little voice more scared than it ever should be and he wanted nothing more than to tear the people who put it there into shreds), practically launching herself from her mother's arms. He caught her effortlessly because of his strength and reflexes, holding her close and trying to calm her. 

“Don’t you want to see your father, darling?” he asked her after a long moment of hushing her. Dan had been glaring at him ever since he’d gotten over his surprise at Trixie's actions. She mumbled something against Lucifer's shoulder and his brow furrowed, but he placed a kiss to the side of her head as he responded, “Alright, dearest heart, I’ll not leave you, but you do need to hug your father.”

As quickly as possible, Trixie leaned out of his arms and into Chloe's, knowing that her dad wouldn't want to be that close to Lucifer (especially after what she called him, her secret that she had wanted to keep private for a little longer, but that was before she was scared and he had come to save her and he kept proving that he always, always would no matter what, so if she sometimes wished harder than she ever had whenever she blew on a dandelion or saw the wishing star or blew out birthday candles that he was her dad instead of the one she had, then it wasn't her fault). She wrapped an arm around his neck but refused to be held by him. After a few moments of awkward positioning, Trixie practically scrambled over her mother to reach Lucifer. 

Lucifer was shocked, as always, that the little girl found him reassuring (he was the Devil, a monster, after all). Still, he held her close and tried to comfort her; taking the Detective's advice about just doing what came naturally had really helped him when it came to the spawn. After a while she started breathing easier, she wasn't asleep, but she was relaxed as long as no one tried to move her. (That was something they found out when Daniel had tried to pry Beatrice off of him, and she screamed (“Papa, Papa, no! Papa, please!”) and cried so hard that Lucifer couldn't help the vicious snarl that escaped him. Dan had shot away from the pair so fast that it looked like he'd gotten whiplash.)

After that, Lucifer held her as she sobbed, his heart breaking on every single one of them, trying to calm her again. She clung to him, loud terrified sobs wracking her tiny body, face turned into his neck, one hand gripping the hair on the back of his head and the other taking a handful of his Armani. He murmured to her softly placing kisses to her hair as he swayed. He let Chloe linger in his space, knowing she just wanted to be close to their dau- her daughter, hers. (Not his, never his, _but_ , a voice inside him whispered, _she called you papa and she wants you, not him, just you_.) And whenever Dan got too close, trying to claim his family back, Lucifer gave him a hard look and let his lips curl into a vicious, soundless snarl and the man backed away, shivering at the primal fear he had felt earlier.

She calmed again, but her grip on the hair at the nape of his neck never relaxed and her breath occasionally caught on an inhale. Chloe told him that it reminded her of when Trixie was a baby (“She always used to do that to me whenever I held her… From the moment she started moving more than a newborn, you know?” she asked rhetorically. “They can't move that much at first, they stay all curled up, but as soon as she stretched out, she would never let go of my hair…” she trailed a hand down the back of her neck to her shoulder, resting it there. “I missed it when she started growing… It always felt reassuring, like she was always gonna need me.”). He decided that's exactly what it felt like, and, as he watched Chloe smile gently at the sight of him holding her daughter, he knew that this was what family was supposed to feel like (he wondered if he had ever felt it, he couldn't remember the Silver City without feeling overwhelming pain… perhaps he'd ask his brother if he remembered). 

Dan wandered too close again and this time Chloe caught the snarl and her ex-husband’s flinch backwards. She scolded Lucifer lightly, just saying his name softly, disapproving. 

“He made her cry, darling,” he replied just as softly, nowhere close to disapproving, just stating fact. Chloe rested a hand between his shoulder blades, and he turned his attention to her, and she sighed nodding almost imperceptibly at him. She understood but didn't think it necessary (he thought it was, he knew that Beatrice couldn't handle another meltdown, and he didn't think he could either, because he would probably kill Daniel for it). “If he tries to take her again, love, and she screams for me like that, he might not survive what I'll do to him,” he murmured into her hair as he pulled her close for a short moment. He heard her scoff and pulled away to look into her eyes, “I mean it, Chloe… She…” He shook his head at her, unable to explain what the little girl’s cries would make him do, how they tore at the very fabric of his soul and made him fly into a rage all at once.

She seemed to understand then, because she leaned into them, and rubbed his back soothingly, like he had been doing with Beatrice. She smiled when Beatrice released his suit and placed her hand on her mother's shoulder. “You feel better, Monkey?” she asked softly. She got a nod in response and was interrupted before she can ask anything else by an officer walking up to them.

“Lucifer, man, you guys can go, okay?” Officer Bodega told them. “Thanks for everything! I don't know how you did it, but I know they're talking about officially calling it a citizen's arrest. Take care of your girls, yeah?” and the man departed, patting Lucifer's unoccupied shoulder as he went.

Dan’s loud scoff made Lucifer's attention focus on him, sharp and unyielding. The other man shrank back, as Lucifer took a step forward. “Problem, Daniel?” he asked, his voice taking on the quality of an angry wolf.

Daniel caught himself flinching, and answered, “They're not ‘your girls’!” The effect of the words are somewhat dampened by the fact that he can't bring himself to come any closer or meet the devil's eyes.

Lucifer rolled his eyes dramatically, “Whether or not they’re anyone's ‘girls’ isn't really important right now, don't you agree?” He sighed, deciding the other man isn't worth his time, and asked the Detective if there's any way they could “commandeer a vehicle and get the little love to bed”.

Daniel had driven himself there and offered them a ride (he started to tell Lucifer that he could drop him a Lux, but Chloe interrupted, “He's staying with us tonight… Trix and I are going to need him…” After that Daniel pouted moodily, like he didn't approve of Lucifer being anywhere near his family). Chloe and Lucifer sat in the back, Beatrice still wrapped in Lucifer's arms. She wasn’t asleep, both Lucifer and Chloe know that she wouldn't be for a while yet, but Daniel kept saying that she must be tired and that she'd had a long day. His statements go mostly ignored, and the ride is relatively quiet aside from Beatrice’s light sniffles.

When they pulled up at the Detective’s apartment, Lucifer carried Beatrice up to the door and walked in, knowing that Chloe was right behind him. He slipped his shoes off at the door, and said to the little girl in his arms, “Why don't you and mum go take a bath, darling? Wash the day away?”

Her eyes filled with tears and Chloe was right there, pressing herself into the two of them. Daniel watched unhappily from the doorway. “Are you gonna stay?” Beatrice asked him, and if she hadn't already had him wrapped around her finger, she certainly did after today.

“Of course,” he replied, smiling gently at her, “someone has to make sure the both of you are fed.” She giggled at him, asking if he promised (he said that he did, and she smiled in that hopeful way she had, like she wanted to believe him, but she couldn't be sure, and it made him want to hit Daniel with a very heavy tire iron), and let her mother carry her away. It didn't escape his notice that Daniel hadn't stopped glaring at him since that officer called them ‘his girls’ (they were, or at least he wanted them to be, but he couldn't be sure, and he didn’t think he deserved them, but damn him to hell all over again if wanted them to be his all the same). 

He ignored the other man and walked into the kitchen, hanging his suit jacket over the back of a chair. He pulled out bread and cheese, knowing that Beatrice would always eat grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Although, he hated that it came from a can, he makes if for her anyway, and he even poured some goldfish onto a plate, so she could put them in the soup just how she liked it.

Daniel wouldn't stop staring, and it’s like he wanted to say something, but didn't think he should. Lucifer just wished the other man would spit it out, so he raised his eyebrows pointedly and asked, “Something you’d like to share with the class, Daniel?”

“Chloe and Trixie are my family,” the other man stated. “I don't know what you think you're doing here, but they're not yours.”

Lucifer just looked at him, he was angry, very angry, but Beatrice was in the house and he didn't want to scare her by shouting. Very calmly, the devil responded, “I'm here because I was asked to be by Beatrice. She needed me, and I was there for her, just as I promised her, I would always be. I will be here until she tells me that she'll be alright without me here. I gave my word to that little girl, to be there for her when you couldn't be, when you wouldn't be… So, if I think of them as mine, even if they aren't, even if it’s only for a moment, don't you dare try and take them from me.” 

There was a long tense moment of silence, their eyes met, and Daniel tried to hold the contact but ultimately, he failed. It was like Lucifer could look into his soul and pull the shame and guilt out from the deepest parts of it.

The very next moment, Beatrice and Chloe shuffled into the kitchen and each came up to hug him around the middle. Beatrice leans against him with her head resting at his middle and he cards a hand through her damp hair, wanting her to know he's glad she’s there. Chloe is content enough to lean against his side as he flips their sandwiches. Eventually, he implores the both of them to sit down while he brings them their food. They comply with good natured grumbles and he sets four bowls down at the table (he might be the devil, but he knows he shouldn't be hostile to the other man, even if Daniel has been nothing but hostile to him). They eat, mostly in silence, but as soon as Beatrice asks if they want to know what she did at school, the table becomes a lot livelier, though the little girl is still subdued (Lucifer knows that she's going to have nightmares and wishes he could stop them). 

As soon as dinner is finished, Lucifer does the dishes, to the protests of both Chloe and Trixie (they stubbornly stand near him and groan loudly every time he picks up another dish to put in the dishwasher, collapsing into laughter occasionally). As soon as he's done, they each grab one of his hands and pull him onto the couch. Beatrice pushes at his chest until he lies down and snuggles into him, pulling her mother down to lie on top of him with her. The three of them laugh for a long moment, before settling (Chloe under his arm, head resting on his shoulder, and Beatrice lying on top of him, her mother’s arm resting on her back), Trixie asking if they can watch a movie tonight (“Please, mommy? Just one? I'm not sleepy! I promise, Lucifer, please?”). They agree, knowing that the later it gets the sleepier she would be. It wouldn't be an easy night, but if they could make it easier for her, they would.

Daniel frowned as he watched them, his daughter didn't seem to want him here with her and he knew she was scared (she always used to need him when she was scared). He knew she would have nightmares, and he didn't know why they were trying to prolong the inevitable. He sat in the armchair and watched as they all cuddled. It should be him at the bottom of the cuddle pile.

Trixie and Chloe debated which movie to watch, giggling whenever Lucifer used his “veto privileges”. Chloe finally got him to relent to _Finding Nemo_ because he had already vetoed _Finding Dory_ (“You can't veto it because it's about fish again! You did that last time!”). They set up the movie, and this time when they cuddled on the couch, they were upright because according to Trixie “that's how you're supposed to start watching movies!” 

Trixie was cuddled on Lucifer's lap, one of his arms around her, and Chloe was pressed snugly into his side, his other arm around her waist. They had turned all but one of the lights off, and Trixie was yawning as soon as the title track started playing on screen. She was nodding off when Nemo got kidnapped, and she was out like a light once Dory and Marlin had found their way out of the angler fish infested trench. Lucifer didn't move, dreading the moment she would wake, sobbing for him or her mother. Chloe had given up all pretenses of watching the movie and pushed against him until he slumped against the corner of the couch. She leaned against him as he laid back bringing Trixie with him, she stroked her daughter's face and back, trying to reassure herself that Trixie was alright, and hadn't been harmed.

They were quiet for a long, long time (so long that the movie had ended, and Chloe changed it so there was a nature documentary series playing). Dan had started snoring lightly in the armchair and Chloe’s eyes were fluttering as she tried to keep them open. Lucifer just laid there, his arms around his girls, waiting for the inevitable, and thinking about what he wanted to do to the men who had kidnapped his daughter. 

When Trixie started to thrash around in his arms, he loosened them, and he felt Chloe sit up next to him. Trixie cried out in her sleep and sat up, breathing hard with tears in her eyes. “Papa?” she called out for him, her voice wobbling past the lump in her throat.

“I'm here, my dearest heart,” he told her, letting her fall back into his arms. She cried quietly into his chest. When she asked for her mother, Chloe laid down next to him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. “She's here too, little darling,” Lucifer whispered, holding the both of them close. Once she was settled against him, her tears not quite gone, but at least she wasn't sobbing anymore, she asked him to sing to her, so he did.

He felt her fall asleep almost instantly, but he kept singing until he felt Chloe sag against him too. He knew she wasn’t truly asleep, so he placed a kiss on her forehead and told her, “Perhaps we should all move to the bedroom, my dearest darling…”

She agreed, and as quietly as possible, they moved from the living room to the Detective’s bedroom. He carried Beatrice while Chloe turned off the lights and television. Beatrice was well and truly dead to the world and barely moved as she was placed on the bed. She was a dead weight as Chloe maneuvered the little girl into her arms. And Lucifer took a moment to watch them, to allow himself to take in the sight of these two humans that had his heart wrapped around their fingers. When he’d taken too long (according to the Detective, who it appeared, wanted him near her, near them), Chloe held out a hand to him and said, “Come to bed, babe.”

He was never one to deny someone their desires, especially the Detective, so he climbed into his side of the bed and pulled the both of them into his arms. He held them close and waited until the both of them were deep in sleep before he pulled away from them and stood. He called his wings and when they appeared gently into the physical realm he opened them and disappeared. 

He reappeared again in the physical realm in front of the holding cell of the man he knew as Gary. Abruptly, he opened the cell and the other man shot up in surprise. “You…” Gary began in fear, and he tried to run out of the cell, but Lucifer closed the door behind him and backed the man into a corner. 

“You hurt my daughter,” Lucifer began, growl building and his eyes burned red. The other man let out an aborted scream, and Lucifer cut him off with a hand at his throat. “I want to know why,” he snarled.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!” the man called Greg told him. He was clawing at the hand around his throat, but it wouldn’t budge.

Lucifer’s eyes glowed a deep, haunting red, and if he still had his Devil face, it would be in full force. The man screamed, unable to look away, as Lucifer demanded once more. “Why!”

“The Sinnerman wanted her!” he cried, tears and spittle streaming down his face. “He asked us to-to get her for him, said it had to be her! I thought he was just into kids at first, but…” Lucifer shook him and growled to keep the man talking. “Alright!” he screamed in terror, desperate, “He-he was tall, like you! Had a-a lot of guys with him, a few cops! Drove off on a bike! Short hair, blond an-and had a weird mark on his arm! A perfect circle!”

Lucifer knew that Pierce had a mark like that, he’d shown him. He didn’t like the man very much either, and he knew that his instincts had been correct when he’d first met the man. With a snarl, he dropped the other man and disappeared from sight before the police could rush to the holding cell and see what the man was screaming in terror about.

Lucifer reappeared in the Detective’s bedroom with a soft flutter of feathers to find the Detective awake with a sleeping Beatrice in her arms. She raised a brow at him and he shrugged his wings away. She asked him with a raised brow where he’d gone, and he didn’t answer her as he took off his waistcoat and belt. When he laid down, she said his name and he knew she was waiting for an answer. “Just to get some answers,” he told her, bringing them back into his arms. 

“You went to the precinct,” Chloe said, knowing he wouldn’t answer any questions tonight. He just stared at her and settled into bed on his side. 

He kept staring at her until she laid down, and when she did, he told her, “I went to see the man who struck Beatrice, and he told me that it was the Sinnerman who ordered her abduction.” His jaw clenched, and he said in a low dangerous voice, “It’s Lieutenant Pierce.” He paused. “I will kill him, darling. He took her from us, and I will make him pay.”

“So, it’s true?” Chloe asked, completely in disbelief. “The Lieutenant is the leader of a criminal organization? Lucifer we have to be careful. We have to be completely sure; we don’t have a lot of proof. We couldn’t find much…”

“The description he gave was… quite accurate,” Lucifer soothed Trixie’s hair back from her face as she shifted in her sleep. “I might… Darling, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself…”

“You have to,” Chloe told him. She pushed her fingers through his hair and let it fall to his cheek. “You already don’t like him, just keep doing that.”

“Chloe, it’s gone from mild dislike to an uncontrollable urge to rip every limb of the man’s body off over and over and over again until he’s begging me to stop,” he was almost growling, but Beatrice made a sound in her sleep which distracted him from his thoughts. He shook his head and looked into Chloe’s eyes. “Have you slept much, love?” he asked, his voice in its gentlest register. 

Chloe shook her head and yawned widely, “Just a few minutes before you left.”

Lucifer pulled the both of them in tighter and said to her, “Let’s sleep now, darling. We’ll have a lie-in tomorrow, hmm? I’ll make us brunch when we wake up. How does that sound?”

“Good,” Chloe yawned again. “Don’t leave again tonight, okay, babe?”

“Course not, love,” he whispered as he saw her eyes flutter shut and stay that way. He knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight, he’d be busy keeping watch. If these two didn’t need him now, he’d be somewhere else, breaking the only rule he’d never broken before in his entire history.

When morning came, Lucifer let himself doze lightly. He felt Trixie shifting and smiled when he felt her settle with her head in her hands and her elbows on his chest. He didn’t open his eyes, but he let himself rumble out a rough, “Good morning, my dearest heart…”

“Morning, papa,” she yawned in his face. She giggled as he wrinkled his nose at her morning breath. “Do we have to get up yet? I don’t think I could go to school today…”

“I think you’re going to be out of school for the rest of the week, little urchin,” Lucifer said. He felt Trixie start to poke at his face like she was trying to see if he really was awake. When she reached for his one of his eye lids, he grabbed her hand trapped it near his heart. Only then did he open his eyes. He met her gaze seriously and asked her, “How are you feeling this morning?”

She shrugged and looked away from him. Her lower lip started to tremble, and she whispered, “Papa, I was so scared…”

He sat up and scooped her into his arms, probably waking the Detective, but right now his only concern was the little girl in his arms. He’d made her cry again and it felt like his heart was breaking. “I’m so sorry, my dear heart,” he whispered to her and placed a soft kiss to the top of her head. “I’m here now, dear Beatrice. I’ll always keep you safe.”

“I know,” she told him through her tears. The Detective leaned into his side and stroked the back of her daughter’s head. “They… the man said that someone wanted me… that he’d paid them…” she told them, her voice thick with tears and Lucifer growled at the mention of the ‘someone’ who’d paid for her.

“They’re never going to come near you again, Monkey,” Chloe told her. “Lucifer and I can promise you that.” Trixie just snuggled into them deeper and cried for a little bit harder. 

Lucifer knew that this was going to be difficult, that hearing her cry like this would be the hardest thing he’d ever done… Every tear she shed tore at his very being and it was a struggle not to go find Marcus Pierce and make him regret ever coming to LA. Instead of acting on the instinct to hunt him down and tear him apart until he begged for it to stop, begged for death, for nothingness, and then… then he wouldn’t give it to him. He’d just keep tearing the immortal man apart with his bare hands just to hear him beg for mercy, to see him break. He wasn’t aware that he was growling until Chloe settled a hand on the side of his face and hushed him along with their- her daughter. _Hers_ not his.

He forced himself to calm down, and when Beatrice had stopped crying, when her tears had dried and he watched her mother make her smile and laugh, and the patchwork job he’d done the night before on his heart had settled just a tiny bit deeper than just on the surface, he carried the little girl downstairs and he settled her on the counter. He knew Chloe had followed him, and when he met her eyes as she settled at the kitchen bar, he let a small smile flit across his face. Quietly, because he noted Daniel was still asleep in the arm chair, he started to make them a small brunch of eggs, pancakes, bacon, and frittatas. Since Chloe was already awake, he made coffee immediately and doctored it for her as he flipped pancakes and bacon. When he set it at her elbow it was the perfect temperature and she sighed into her cup as he turned away. He caught sight of Daniel standing near the kitchen, watching them as he put the finishing touches on breakfast. He didn’t acknowledge the other man, pretending that he hadn’t seen him standing there, and he poured Beatrice some juice and plated their food for them. 

He couldn’t know what Daniel was thinking, couldn’t know that other man was mourning the spot that Lucifer had taken in his life. That Daniel had been filling in as a father figure for Charlotte’s kids and, while he was getting better at being a dad to Trixie, he’d just realized that he dropped the ball with her.

He couldn’t know what Daniel was thinking, but he could give the man some breakfast, and let him see for himself that his daughter was alright. So he called Daniel over and set his plate on the other side of Beatrice for him. Daniel’s attitude towards him had softened overnight and he didn’t know why, so he just plated himself some breakfast and walked around the counter to stand next to the Detective. She leaned into him, like she was gathering strength, and he absently placed a kiss to her temple as he tucked in. 

Beatrice took the morning in hand and had the whole room smiling by the end of brunch. Which was when Daniel’s cell rang, and he was called away. He wished them all goodbye and he even thanked Lucifer so genuinely that the Devil didn’t quite know what to do. Then, of course, Lucifer’s phone rang, and he had to call Mazikeen off the warpath because they’d gotten her back, he promised and that they’d be at the apartment all day if she’d like to stop by and check. When she asked if there was anyone she needed to punish, he just growled lowly and told her in a voice that rumbled like the Lord of Hell that he had plans and that he would carry them out himself (he ignored the fact that Chloe was staring him down, telling him with her eyes that he most certainly would not, at least not fully). 

After he hung up, he took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. He knew he wouldn’t do his Deckers any good if he was worked up. They were the ones that needed support, the ones that mattered. They were more important than him, so he had to make sure that they were okay, and then he could take care of himself. He didn’t take into account that Chloe would, quite literally, bully him into letting her take care of him. And he hadn’t realized that it would start immediately. 

When he was tugged onto the couch a few hours later, after Trixie had fallen asleep and been relocated to her room, he hadn’t known that Chloe had been watching him try to calm himself down, that she’d noticed that he was upset. So, she pulled him down onto the couch and then pulled him down so that he was lying half on top of her with his head resting on her shoulder. She placed a kiss to his forehead and told him that they would get Pierce and that they would do it together. She told him that she knew he was angry and upset and she was too, and that it was okay to take care of himself, or really, what she’d said had been, “Let me take care of you, Lucifer… you don’t need to hold all of that in…”

He’d sighed and asked tentatively as he pulled away from her the slightest bit, “Would you… can I hold you, Chloe?”

She cupped his cheek and said, “Of course you can, Lucifer.” 

At her word, he maneuvered her until she was in front of him and he was spooning her from behind. He buried his face in her hair and took several deep breaths. She always smelled so good, and it always made him feel calm. Sometimes, it felt good to hold her like this instead of her lying on top of him or her holding him. He’d really only held her like this a handful of times, and really only when they’d been sleeping, and he’d woken up with her back pressed to his front. He tugged her closer when a wave of emotion came over him. Their daughter had been taken… they might have lost her forever and he… he wanted to destroy something. He wanted to take Pierce and just… killing him wasn’t enough, would never be enough, and he clenched his fist as it rested against the Detective’s stomach.

He opened his eyes in shock as Chloe trailed her fingers over his clenched fist until he relaxed his hand. Then, she brought his hand up to her lips and placed a few gentle kissed there before holding it to her chest like she needed him just as much as he needed her in this moment. “He just… we could’ve lost her, Chloe…” he told her, his voice shaky and raw. “We could’ve lost her…”

“We didn’t,” she told him sounding very much like she was trying to hold back tears too. 

“I just keep thinking what would’ve happened if he’d gotten to her before I did and I…” he took a deep breath to try and calm himself. “She’s our daughter! She’s ours! And he could’ve just…” He buried his face deeper into her hair and neck. “He could’ve… he was! He was going to take her away from us!” He was growling again, and his body was rigid, but he made sure not to hurt the Detective, not to clench the hand she was holding. He didn’t want to hurt her… he couldn’t even keep their daughter safe, and he really didn’t want to hurt her…

Chloe shushed him, her fingertips running up and down the length of his forearm. “You saved her, Lucifer. You did. All that matters is that we got her back and that she’s safe now… She’s safe because of you,” she told him, and he knew she was crying now, he could tell, so he pulled her even closer, leaning over her slightly to press soft kisses to her cheek and temple. Her eyes were tightly closed but tears were still falling from them. He couldn’t stand the sight, so he pulled her to lie on her back and he leaned over her, kissing some tears away and wiping others away with the thumb of his hand as it rested against her face. He pulled back after a moment and she looked up at him, a little heartbroken but ultimately, like he was at the very least a good man, and he felt a wave of unworthiness wash over him. 

He laid down again and buried his face in her hair. He knew he didn’t deserve her thanks, her thoughts of whether or not he was a good man. He took a deep breath, breathing in the scent of her hair. It was mingled slightly with the scent of Beatrice and that calmed him just a little bit more. She was here and safe and that was what mattered right now. In a few days after they’d all recovered a little and Trixie had gone back to school, then they would worry about Marcus Pierce.

×××

Lucifer was more than ready to take care of the Sinnerman. He had agreed with Chloe when she had told him that he wasn’t allowed to take the man and tear him to bits over and over and over, but he still wanted to do it, to make him pay. So, one night, after Beatrice had had a terrible nightmare that took an hour and a half to soothe away, he suggested taking the man and carrying him down to Hell and leave him to the demons there with instructions for them to kill them as much as they could, perhaps reunite him with his brother. Chloe had thought about it for a long while, her eyes on her now sleeping daughter, and then had quietly agreed.

The next morning they had stepped into the precinct after dropping Trixie off for her first day back at school and Lucifer had tried to make a beeline for Pierce’s office, but Chloe had held him back. He was practically twitching in her grasp as she dragged him into the lab, where Ella was watching them with raised eyebrows. 

“So, uh… what’s up? You look a little…” Ella started but trailed off as Lucifer didn’t even look away from the direction Pierce’s office was in. “Well, you look like you’re about to kill someone, Lucifer,” Ella settled on, shrugging at Chloe when she looked at Ella with her mom look.

“I am,” he growled lowly. He looked like he was struggling to stay in place, held there only by Chloe’s hand.

“No,” Chloe told him firmly, “you’re not.” Lucifer glanced away from Pierce’s office for a second, meeting Chloe’s eyes and giving her a conceding nod. She turned to Ella, but she didn’t let go of Lucifer’s bicep as she said, “We have proof, a confession, some circumstantial stuff, and a little bit of physical evidence that proves that Pierce is the Sinnerman.” Ella’s mouth dropped open in shock, and Lucifer growled again. Chloe lifted her other hand to his lower back and stroked him gently there until the growling stopped. “It’s in a folder on the kitchen counter in my apartment labeled under ‘Decker, John Miscellaneous’ okay? I want you to go and get it as soon as possible, okay, Ella?”

“Like, right now soon?” Ella asked looking between the two of them. 

Chloe nodded, “As soon as I let go of Lucifer.” Ella nodded and took a deep breath. She had a worried look on her face and Chloe wanted to soothe it, but there wasn’t time. If Pierce knew about that file, if he got to it before they did… it would be bad. They didn’t bring it in with them because they knew that if they did, Pierce would know what they were up to. “Ella,” Chloe started, “You can do this. It’s in the middle of the stack, don’t rush, pretend you forgot something at home or that you offered to pick something up from my place for me because we got a lead on something, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ella breathed, trying to calm herself down a little. “Okay, I got this, Chloe, I promise!”

Chloe smiled fondly at the forensic scientist. “Thank you, Ella,” she said, and then she handed Ella her keys. Then she looked over at Lucifer and called his name. He met her eye and didn’t say a word. Chloe reached up and caressed his face. They stared at each other for the longest moment, the air between them charged, and then Chloe let her grip on his arm slip. He was out of the lab before either of the women had let out a breath. Chloe nodded to Ella and then she left the room so go sit at her desk. Ella counted to three, and then she left to get that file.

As soon as Chloe sat at her desk, there was a loud commotion coming from Pierce’s office and then a pained roar. That sounded like Lucifer and Chloe bit her lip worriedly as all sound in the room ceased. She watched as a few officers entered and then left the room confused. When they were asked, they said that there was no one there, that the office was empty, and she sighed. She wasn’t relieved, she was worried. She rubbed at the middle of her forehead. She’d had enough worry to last her a long, long time. A little less than an hour later, she got a text from Ella that she was back, and she’d gotten the file and also lunch to make it look like a casual sort of meeting. 

She made her way to Ella’s lab and headed for the bag of food and ignored the file. She wanted this to look like a casual lunch to the cops who might have been working with Pierce. If there even were any, and she was sure that maybe there were. Her thoughts were interrupted by Ella asking, “So, where’s Lucifer? I heard one of the beat cops saying that there was a huge noise in Pierce’s office, but when Jenkins went to see what it was, there was nothing there, only a few papers on the floor…”

“He… he and Pierce had something to talk about,” Chloe said. Not exactly true, but… it was something that Ella would actually believe. Or not, if the look on her face was anything to go by. “Look, Ella,” Chloe started, and then she sighed. She reached over and grabbed the file, she flipped through it for a moment, before she found what she was looking for. “Read through that okay? It’s the transcript of the interrogation of one of the guys that took Trixie,” she said. 

Ella’s forehead creased, but she did as Chloe requested. When she got to the section of the man’s description of who paid for Trixie to get kidnapped, she looked up at Chloe in shock. Chloe just nodded solemnly went back to picking at her food worriedly. “So, Lucifer and Pierce are where exactly?” Ella asked. “Because Lucifer looked ready to kill him, like, I’m talkin’ ripping him apart, like, cold blooded murder, ripping apart…”

Here, Chloe sighed again. She didn’t want to lie to Ella, but she also didn’t want to… but then Lucifer never really kept it a secret, so maybe she shouldn’t either. “Ella… Lucifer… I know you don’t really believe him, but Lucifer is the Devil, and I know that sounds crazy, and I promise you I’m not- he hasn’t brainwashed me or anything, okay?” she met Ella’s eyes and knew she wasn’t quite convinced. “Look, Ella, just- he showed me, and I have proof and I believe him, and-” She was cut off by her cell phone ringing. It was Linda, so she answered, thinking maybe Lucifer had gone to her. As soon as she answered, she heard a familiar yell. “Linda, is he okay?” she asked, desperately trying to keep her tears at bay. He sounded like he was in pain and angry and she wanted to go to him.

“No,” Linda replied. “You better bring Ella and a first aid kit.” These were said simply and rationally. “He needs you, Chloe, he won’t calm down until he sees you…” 

Chloe hung up the phone and gathered the file together as calmly as she could. “Ella, can you grab a first aid kit and come with me?” she asked, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. Ella nodded, her eyes wide, and followed Chloe out of the precinct into the garage. As soon as they were both buckled in, Chloe started driving, but she didn’t start speeding until she was about two blocks away from the station. She drove as fast as she was able, and she never said a word, just kept biting her lip. 

When they arrived at Linda’s office, Chloe walked right in even though the little light was on above the door. She knew Ella was shocked at the sight of Lucifer standing in the corner growling furiously at anyone that came near him. Maze was bleeding from a gash on her head that Linda was silently patching up and Lucifer was bleeding from several places and his wings were out and looked dreadfully out order. He looked like he was seeing them, but he wasn’t quite comprehending what was happening around him. Chloe wondered, with a great sense of dread, what he went through down in Hell even though he had assured her that he’d be back before she knew he was gone (he hadn’t been and that was when she’d really started worrying, because Lucifer never lied). 

“Oh, fuck,” Ella said quietly, and Lucifer reacted with a growl, his feathers puffing out like he was trying to make himself look bigger than he actually was. 

Chloe placed her bag gently on the couch and stepped towards him. She ignored Maze’s warning her not to get too close and moved until she was standing in front of him. “Lucifer,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears, “Lucifer, it’s me…” And then she reached out and touched his cheek. His eyes snapped towards hers and a snarl ripped from his throat, but he seemed to realize who she was, what was happening mid-motion, because he went from starting to attack her to pulling her to him in one quick jerk. He buried his face in her shoulder and breathed deeply before collapsing against her and bringing her with him to his knees. “Are you okay?” Chloe whispered into his ear. 

His only response was to breathe heavily into her neck for a moment before murmuring her name into the skin of her neck over and over. After a long moment of practically hiding from the world in her shoulder, he pulled back and placed a hand on her face like it was the first time seeing her in years. “You’re okay,” he said, more to reassure himself than her. She nodded, and he rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, just soaking her in.

“Are you hurt?” she couldn’t help but ask. She brought her hand up to rest on his cheek and smiled tearfully as he nuzzled into the contact. He just hummed in response and placed half a dozen kisses to the heel of her palm. “Lucifer, babe, look at me,” she said firmly, and he shuddered like he sometimes did when she called him that, but he looked at her. “Are you hurt?” she asked him again.

He whined and pulled back from her. “There was a legion of demons vying for power down there and I got caught in the middle,” he growled the last part. He showed her the few shallow lacerations he’d gotten in the fight. They were nothing serious, but they were bleeding sluggishly, and Chloe wanted nothing more than to take him home and clean him up. 

“Uh,” Ella interrupted. “Do you want help with your cuts, Lucifer?” She was standing near them and holding the first aid kit in her left hand. “I mean obviously, you probably do but like it’s polite to ask.” When Lucifer just sort of stared at her in shock, backtracked, “Or, you know, you don’t, but like I can’t help with the-” she made a motion by the side of her head with her hand, presumably meaning his wings, and Lucifer seemed to remember he had them out, “you know, _those_ because I was never great with birds and-” She cut herself off when Lucifer shrugged them out of sight. Her eyes widened, and Chloe thought this was going to be her big freak out, but she just whispered, “That’s so cool!” 

Lucifer pulled back from Chloe and said, “Help would be appreciated, Miss Lopez.” So Chloe helped him onto the couch and helped Ella clean up Lucifer’s cuts but mostly she placed kisses to Lucifer’s temple and hands because Ella kept telling her not to bother and to ‘keep Mr. Fidget occupied’ so she could work without him trying to interfere. 

When Ella was done, she placed a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and gave him one of her special Ella Lopez smiles. “Glad you’re okay, Luce…” she said, and when his eyes narrowed, she finished, “…ifer.” 

Linda and Maze were staring between them. And then Maze spoke up, “I’m not gonna be the one to tell Amenadiel that you let someone else in on your secret.” And then she stood and left with a wink to both Linda and Chloe. She threw a ‘see you later Ellen’ over her shoulder and everyone was bewildered for a short moment.

Linda rolled her eyes and told Ella, “If you ever need to talk about it, Ella, I’m in the know, okay?” And when Ella wondered if she was free right now, Linda was surprised. 

Chloe pulled Lucifer up to his feet, quietly saying goodbye to Linda and Ella. She wanted to hold him and Trixie until they melted into her, but her little girl had actually been looking forward to school and she had to get Lucifer back to his place, so he could change his suit and come back to the precinct with her. She knew they had to get their evidence to the Police Captain at their precinct. There was a chance he worked for the Sinnerman, but it was a chance that they were willing to take. Especially since they had removed the head of the whole organization. The police in the city were going to be busy dealing with the fall out, but this was LA, they should be used to the crime rate. 

Chloe followed Lucifer into his bedroom and sat on the bed as he went to the closet to change. She stared at the wall and chewed on her lip. What if it had been worse? What if he’d never come back? What if he’d died there and she’d never told him how she felt? He was quick about changing, but there was a smudge of soot or something on his jawbone, so she went into mom-mode, and licked at her thumb, wiping the smudge away. When she pulled back slightly, not too far, she still had a hand on his cheek and when she looked into his eyes, soulful and deep and holding so much emotion that she just wanted to gather him to her and protect him forever. 

Lucifer put his hands at her hips when she tried turning away. Her eyes flew up to his, and she gasped inaudibly at the expression that had settled over his face. It was a mixture of determination, absolute devotion, and just the tiniest amount of fear, but… but he leaned toward her. he leaned toward her and she leaned toward him and when they met in the middle… It was like learning to breathe. Their lips met, softly and reverently and it was so gentle that her eyes burned with unshed tears and when he pulled away to rest his head on her forehead she was breathless. She was as breathless as he was, and, fuck, she loved this man with every part of her, so she pulled him to her again and covered his lips with her own. This time she captured his bottom lip between her own and his shocked gasp just encouraged her, and as she let her tongue swipe along his bottom lip, he seemed to realize that, yes, she was kissing him again. She felt him pull her closer, their hips pressing together, and as their tongues tangled together, it was like everything in her universe slotted into place and… she just loved him, was all. 

This time when they pulled away from each other, Chloe buried her face in his shoulder. He must have put on some cologne because he smelled more like himself than he had in Linda’s office. There was still a lingering undercurrent of… well, Hell, she guessed, and she was glad he was back with her even though he hadn’t been gone long. She’d been too worried.

Chloe made herself pull away from his embrace, but she linked their hands together and tugged him towards the elevator. She caught him watching her as they stood in the elevator. He looked like he was in awe of her, like she was the most important person in his life. She didn’t quite know what that meant for them, but she knew what she wanted it to mean. They barely stopped touching each other as they made their way into the station. When they got there, they made their way to the Captains office, but Chloe only let go of Lucifer’s hand when they got to the office door.

They handed over their evidence and Chloe told him that she thought Pierce had been onto them and that she thought he might have gone on the run. Captain Johnston Said that they would definitely look into it and told them to be careful, because if it were true (and it was, they knew it was, but they appreciated that he needed to find out for himself) then they might be in at least a little trouble. When they left the office, Chloe took his hand again and dragged him towards her desk. She started some paper work, and he did his usual milling around the station, except every time he came back to her desk, he’d brush a hand over hers or place a soft kiss to her hair.

They spent the day at her desk, the criminals and murderers seemingly taking a break for the day at least. When it was time for them to head home, they did so together, and so they could be with Trixie after her first day back at school after her kidnapping. 

Lucifer hadn’t known what to think after they’d kissed in his penthouse. He thought that it was, perhaps, a fluke, but she kept holding his hand. He would give her anything she wanted, anything at all, and if she wanted to kiss him and hold his hand then he would let her. They held hands on a semi-regular basis, so he really had no idea what would come next. All he really knew was that he didn’t deserve even an ounce of her attention, but he would take what he could get, or what she would give him.

What he didn’t know was that Chloe hadn’t considered it a fluke. She thought it was them moving forward and she thought he was very deserving of any of her attention. He, on the other hand, thought that he barely deserved half of the attention. And as much as he adored her, he didn’t think that he was worthy. He was still stuck on the fact that they wanted him around, that they didn’t only need him but enjoyed his presence. This was something they kept having to remind him, and he was getting better, he was, but sometimes his insecurities got the better of him. He had been just letting himself enjoy their company, enjoy just being with them, being around them, but now… Now the Detective had kissed him. She had kissed him, and he’d kissed her back and he was… 

It had felt better than he’d ever imagined it, and it had lingered all day long. He’d felt the ghost of her lips on his until it was time for them to go home. In the car, she’d placed her hand over his and traced nonsensical patterns on the back of his hand. He had tried to stop his reaction to them, to the barely there caress of her fingertips against his skin, but at some point he’d given up and had gasped with a shiver. He wanted to feel her fingers all over. He wanted her to trace patterns like that on his back and shoulders and… He thought that perhaps that was asking too much, that he was asking too much and he… he was the Devil so what made him think that he deserved it?

So, when they got to the Detective’s home, still holding hands, still standing closer than they normally would have, he just let her do what she wanted. If she wanted to lean against his other side as he set her spawn against hip, then he let her. If she wanted to settle into his lap as Trixie sprawled out on the carpet to color while dinner was in the oven, then he would let her. When she decided to kiss him again, gentle and lingering and soft and just… everything he’d ever wanted and dreamed of, and… he just… he loved her more than he ever thought he could love anyone or anything, her and Beatrice, and he was just… He was just… he’d never felt more like he belonged anywhere than he belonged here in this moment with them and her lips on his… In this moment, he felt like he was home. And when she pulled back, he couldn’t help caressing the side of her face and looking up at her like she was his everything, because she was. 

She smiled down at him and placed her hand on his cheek. With her other hand, she traced the line of his nose and stroked his hair. He had no idea what it meant, what she wanted from him or why she had suddenly started kissing him. Eventually, they put the little girl to bed, and Chloe pulled him down on the couch. She didn’t sit in his lap this time, but she was very close, her body turned towards his, so he angled his towards her. 

“Lucifer,” she started, and he looked up from his hands to meet her eyes, “I know it was probably unexpected… but… I did kiss you, and I meant to kiss you, okay?” As soon as she told him that, he looked down and away. He didn’t deserve that, didn’t deserve her and he… “Lucifer,” she said again, and she placed a hand on his face to lead his eyes back to hers. “What’s wrong, babe?” she asked him.

At her question, his eyes closed, and he covered her hand with his and held it to his cheek. “I… Chloe, darling… I’m the Devil… no one can know that and still want…” He trailed off and shook his head.

“Not to me… not to that little girl…” she told him in a whisper. “To us… you’re just Lucifer. To me…” she lifted his face to hers, rested her forehead on his and looked him in the eyes, “to me, you’re the man I love…”

This time, it was Lucifer who pressed his lips to hers. Lucifer that pulled her into his lap and kissed her with all the feeling he held for her in his heart. It was passionate and gentle and soft and just perfect and when they pulled back they were both breathless. He rested his forehead against hers and they sat there for as long as they could, until Chloe started yawning and tired tears were gathering at her lashes every time she did. So he carried her to bed as he usually would, except this time she distracted him with kisses on the way there, and he had to resist the urge to pin her against the wall and just ravish her mouth until neither of them could breathe properly. But he didn’t because she couldn’t possibly want that even though she’d told him that she loved him, him, the Devil, but that’s so much different than just a few kisses.

So he settled her into bed and then settled himself next to her, sans shirt as usual. She sidled up to him immediately, her head on his chest and her fingers tracing barely there patterns against his side. He couldn’t help the shudder that went through him after a couple passes of her fingers. She chuckled at him, “Are you ticklish?” 

He covered her hand with one of his and said, “No, it just… it feels good…” She smiled at him and leaned up to kiss him. She leaned over him and as soon as her tongue touched his bottom lip, he opened his mouth and let his tongue slide along hers. He brought a hand up to tangled in her hair and changed the angle so that he could drink more of her in. She broke away from him to take a breath and he expected her to dive back in like he so desperately wanted her to, but instead she anchored her hands in his hair and pulled lightly, making his groan. He felt her smirk at him against the skin of his neck, and gasped when she placed a kiss there. His breath left him in a rush when she lightly dragged her teeth over where she’d kissed him, and he gasped again. He brought her lips back to his and gave her all he could, all he was feeling with his lips and tongue, rolling them so that she was under him and he was cradled between her thighs. They both groaned as he ground into her, lightly at first, as if he were afraid that it was going to far, and then harder when she gasped and pulled him closer. He placed one last kiss to her lips, long and lingering because he didn’t want to stop, but he had to before he… before she regretted him ever touching her. She was absolute perfection, as close to divine as a human being could get, and he was… he was the Devil and she deserved much better than him. But now, oh, now that he knew how she kissed, what she felt like against him… he’d never be able to let her go. He was breathing heavily when he pulled back and she tried to pull him back to her, but he shook his head. “Chloe,” he whispered, and he hated that it sounded like begging but… but it was, and this was his Chloe, his Detective, and he knew she would understand.

She released her grip on his hair and ran the back of her hand down his cheek. “Okay,” she said simply, “okay…” She was looking into his eyes and she had a smile on her face and, gently, she pulled him down for one last kiss and he gave it to her because she asked, because she was his everything. “Let’s sleep, okay?” she told him when she pulled back. He settled next to her, his head resting on her shoulder and his hand slipping under her shirt to rest against the soft skin of her side. He laid there until she fell asleep, and when she did he tried to pull away, but she made a noise in the back of her throat and turned into him. She practically burrowed into his side and wrapped her arms around him. He chuckled. He supposed he’d be staying with her for the night. Not that he minded, but it was a little overwhelming, going from thinking she would never love him, to her telling him that she did and he… He didn’t think he deserved it.

×××

The next few days were a bit hectic. It seemed like they had been able to prove that Pierce was the Sinnerman and the precinct was in high spirits. The crime rate had been getting steadily worse, and as soon as Captain Johnston had announced that Pierce was indeed the Sinnerman and that the FBI was now on a manhunt for him, well, there had been a lot of congratulations thrown around. Lucifer found it ironic because the last time that the Detective had brought down a corrupt cop, her coworkers hadn’t been quite as kind. 

He walked into the lab and was about to announce his presence to Miss. Lopez and the Detective when he heard the latter speak. “And I know we kissed for the first time a few days ago, but… but I want more with him, it feels like I could have more with him now, but I don’t know if we’ve been together long enough…” she said, and he was floored. She wanted… she wanted him…

“Decker,” Miss Lopez started with a chuckle, “the two of you have been together for a long time. Ever since he started being all dad-like with Trixie, you two have been together. I can see the way he looks at you, Chlo’, he thinks you and your daughter and the most important things in the universe. I think he’s a little scared, to be honest with you. He’s probably never been in a relationship, the poor guy…”

“Maybe,” Chloe sighed. “But you… you don’t think it’s weird to… want… want more after only a few days?”

“How long have you loved him?” Ella asked. Lucifer held his breath, ready for her to say it just started, that she only started loving him after she kissed him, and that would be… he’d give her what she wanted but… He knew she’d never be able to love him for being himself.

Chloe smiled slightly, her cheeks going pink. “One day, probably a little over a year ago… He’d taken Trixie somewhere, I don’t really remember, but… they walked back in the door and they were both smiling. Trix was laughing so hard I thought she was going to pass out and then I looked up at Lucifer and… He was watching her like she was the most precious thing he’d ever seen and that… I knew I loved him then… that if he could- could love her like that… She’s a part of me, Ella. If he could love her like she was his own then…”

“You… you really love me?” he asked. The two women whipped around, and Chloe had turned almost bright red. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Of course I love you, Lucifer…” Chloe said, her face was cooling. “How… Did you not believe me when I told you?”

Lucifer ducked his head. “I did… or… it’s… It’s hard to believe when no one ever really has before…” he almost whispered. He looked away from the two women and adjusted his cufflinks. When Chloe and Ella both gaped at him he looked down at his hands. “People… I’m only ever told that when someone wants something from me and I… Beatrice is the only one who… She’s young enough not to… to manipulate me like that…”

“Ella, can you give me and Lucifer a minute?” Chloe asked. She never took her eyes off of him and he looked down at his hands once more. When they were alone, Chloe reached for his hand and pulled him toward her. She sat him down on a chair and stood between his knees with her hands on his face. “I do love you Lucifer,” she whispered, “I love you so much and I don’t want anything from you that you aren’t willing to give me, okay?”

“I’d give you whatever you asked for,” he told her. He placed a hand on her waist and looked into her eyes. 

“But I want that to be because you want to, not because you think you have to,” Chloe told him. “You don’t have to love me just because I love you.”

He shook his head and pulled her just a little closer. “That’s not why… I don’t think I have to,” he whispered, “I just do, and I… I don’t see how you can because I’m…” He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes begging her to understand. “Chloe, my dearest darling, I’m the Devil, I’m… I’m absolutely nothing compared to you, and I… I don’t deserve- I’m not worthy of you or Beatrice and I-”

“Enough, Lucifer,” Chloe said quietly. Her thumbs were caressing his face like she was trying to soothe him into thinking he was worth it. “You are worthy because we chose you. You do deserve to be loved, really loved, for who you are and not what you can offer to me or anyone else. Trixie and I love you, Lucifer. We _love you_ so much and you are everything to _our_ little girl and to me.” 

Chloe had tears running down her cheeks and Lucifer stood, wiping at them with his thumbs. “Don’t cry, darling,” he whispered, placing a kiss on her forehead and then each of her cheeks.

She placed both her hands over his and looked into his eyes, “We love you, Lucifer. We love you so much, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. I’ll tell you as often that you need me to so that you’ll believe it one day, but, Lucifer, babe, I love you, okay?”

He took a shaky breath in and nodded, “And I you, darling…” At that she pulled him into an embrace, her face buried in his chest and his in her hair and all at once he felt like he was home and that he belonged. He pulled away when she did and then he bent down to kiss her, gentle and soft and with everything he’d ever felt for her. 

Now, they just had to get through the rest of the day. With shy smiles, they gave Ella her lab back and settled at the Detective’s desk to go through some cold cases to stave off the boredom. They settled into their seats, waiting until they could go home. Chloe’s hand was resting in Lucifer’s, his thumb caressing her fingers every now and then. When it was time to leave, they took their time making their way out of the precinct and into the Detective’s car. 

“You know… it _is_ a weekend, darling,” Lucifer began. He watched her nod out of the corner of her eye. “Perhaps we could take Beatrice to _Mike’s_ and tell her that we’re…”

Chloe grinned, “That’s a great idea, Lucifer.” She glanced at him as she drove and grasped his hand. “She’ll love it…”

He smiled at her, a genuine, sweet smile and when they got to her apartment he bounded up to the door excitedly and scooped Beatrice up in a hug. She giggled and held onto his neck with all her might. Chloe came up behind them and laughed at how Lucifer was swinging her from side to side. 

“Come on, Monkey,” Chloe said, not even trying to cut off her laugh, “we’re going to _Mike’s_ and we’ve gotta be done before your dad comes to get you. Did you pack a bag already?”

“Yeah!” Trixie said, and she squirmed to get Lucifer to release her. “I’m all packed and I’m ready to go to _Mike’s_! Come on, Papa, let’s go!” She grabbed his hand and started pulling but he wouldn’t budge. 

Chloe laughed as Trixie collapsed back against Lucifer with an overexaggerated, exhausted sigh. “Come on, Lucifer,” Chloe said with a smile. She was… her smile was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and when put next to her daughter’s, well, it was irresistible. So he let himself be tugged out the door and Chloe insisted on him driving because it was like the first time they’d ever gone together ‘as a family’. And he hadn’t expected that she would love him, not like he was family, but here they were, and he was… This was everything he’d ever wanted, a family and unconditional love (and he knew that he would have to remind himself again and again that they were his and he was theirs and they did love him for no other reason than that was how they felt, and he was… it was almost overwhelming). 

He drove them to _Mike’s_ and when Mike himself had taken their order, he started to get just a little nervous. He didn’t know how Beatrice would react to him being with her mother, but based on the fact that the Detective, that Chloe, wasn’t really nervous at all was a bit comforting. As soon as they got their food, Chloe called for her daughter’s attention. 

“Monkey, Lucifer and I have something to tell you,” she started, her smile was gentle like it always was when it was directed at her daughter. 

“Is it about you guys kissing on Tuesday?” she asked, using a napkin to wipe her mouth when Lucifer handed it to her. 

Chloe laughed and looked down shyly. “You saw that, huh?” she asked scrunching her nose playfully like she would do sometimes. 

“Yeah,” Trixie said with a big smile. “I thought I was gonna have to wish for it at Christmas again, but I guess I don’t have to do that anymore.” She almost took a bite of her food again until she gasped and sat up straight, “Does this mean you guys are, like, together, together?”

Chloe laughed and looked at Lucifer like she happiness was spilling out of her every pore. He turned to Beatrice and said, “Yes, my dear heart, that’s what it means.”

Trixie’s cry of joy was loud and caused Mike to ask what was wrong, saying that his food couldn’t possibly be that good. Trixie laughed and told him that yes, his food was delicious, but she was happy because Lucifer and her mother had finally gotten together. Mike gaped at them, for a long moment. “You’re telling me that you haven’t been dating this whole time?” he asked, like he didn’t believe it. 

“No, we haven’t,” Chloe said with a light blush.

Mike just put his face in his palm and sighed loudly, walking away mutter to himself about ‘oblivious freaking men’ and ‘stupid love-sick fools’. He did of course bring out a huge slice of chocolate cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream made especially for Chloe because she now ‘had to deal’ with Lucifer ‘forever’ because ‘that’s how long the two of you are gonna last, don’t argue with me, I just know these things’.

They had to leave not long after they finished their cake and ice cream, but Lucifer, of course, ignored Mike’s warning not to pay, and they rushed out to the car just in time to watch Mike folding his arms at them in the rearview. They got back to the Detective’s apartment with five minutes to spare before Daniel got there. As they walked through the door, Trixie running ahead of them to check her bag, Lucifer pulled her into a kiss, because that was something he could do now whenever they weren’t at work, of course, and he was beyond himself with happiness (and only feeling a little bit like he didn’t deserve it).

Daniel was right on time, and he took one look at them wrapped up in each other and offered them a tentative smile. “Finally, huh?” he chuckled with a smirk. Chloe grinned at him, and Lucifer just looked down at her like she was the most important thing in the universe. “Well, good, I’m glad, I think Ella was gonna explode from the sexual tension,” Dan laughed.

Chloe huffed a laugh out at that and smiled at Daniel before turning towards him. Her smile softened and it was like she couldn’t help caressing the side of Lucifer’s face. “I’m glad too,” she said, mostly to Daniel but she was looking at him and her eyes were bright and soft and just for him.

Trixie rushed to hug her dad when she emerged from her room and then she turned to Chloe and Lucifer and she grinned at them. She jumped into their arms and hugged them goodbye, told them that she loved them and that she would see them on Monday. She and Daniel closed the doors behind them.

When they were finally alone, Lucifer couldn’t help himself and placed a kiss to her lips. She had said that she wanted him earlier, that she wanted more with him. He wasn’t expecting anything, not today, but she kissed him back furiously. He was a little surprised by her eagerness, but he quickly caught up. They kissed for the longest time, just allowing themselves to feel and be with each other. Chloe pulled back first, she was panting lightly, like he was, and she grabbed his hand pulling him towards the stairs. She looked at him as he stilled in front of them. He wanted her to be sure, and she’d said she wanted him earlier, but earlier wasn’t in this moment now…

She placed her hands on the sides of his face and looked into his eyes. “Come to bed with me,” she whispered, and he was slave to her voice, to her whims, to her. She pulled at him again and this time, he heeded her lead. She closed the door behind them and brought her hands up to slip his suit jacket off of his shoulders. He let it fall and brought his hands up to caress her face, his fingertips tracing her nose and around her eyes. When his fingers reached her lips, she parted them and he traced her bottom lip with his index finger and then, as gently as possible, he tilted her chin up and kissed her. It was soft and lingering, and he pulled at her bottom lip with his teeth, not hard, but just enough for her to open her mouth under his and allow him to caress her tongue his. 

He let her unbutton his waistcoat and shirt. He let her slip them off of his shoulders, but he stopped her hands when they got to his belt. Instead, he pulled her shirt off, tracing barely there patterns on the skin of her waist and shoulders. She removed her bra, not giving him the chance to draw it out, so he started kissing down the length of her neck. He paused at the spot where her jaw met the line of her neck and placed soft sucking kisses there and soothed them when she moaned and pulled at his hair. He focused on placing openmouthed kisses all the way down to her shoulder, and when he finished, he moved to the other side of her neck. This time, when he reached her pulse point, she pulled at his hair as he mouthed at it and he lightly bit down on the skin there causing her to moan and her hips hitched forwards into his. 

He groaned and slipped a hand down towards her thigh to hitch it around his waist. She just jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. He buried his face in her neck and gave a stuttering moan as he gripped her hips and ground the ridge of his cock into the warm heat of her center. He walked them to the bed and set her down on it gently, hovering over her and grinding his hips against hers as the both of them moaned. He moved down her body, kissing a path and lingering at her breasts as she moaned his name. She pulled his hair with one hand and caressed his shoulders with the other. She gasped as he employed his teeth and he moved lower, laving at her navel and unbuttoning her pants.

He pulled off her pants and underwear, kneeling beside the bed. He pulled her toward him and placed kisses on the underside of her knee and bit lightly at the skin of her inner thigh. “I can make you feel so good, darling,” he told her kissing her knee again. “I could worship you like this… I’ll treat you so gently, my love…” He placed kisses and soft bites up to her center and licked there just to hear her moan his name. He kissed and sucked at her clit and when she moaned his name, he slid a finger into her, and curled it up hitting that rough spot inside her. He added another when her hips canted upwards and he kept hitting that spot as he thrust his fingers in and out of her. He knew when she was getting close and because her legs started shaking and she kept saying his name over and over as her hips bucked upwards into his face. He relished in it, the feel of her around his fingers, the taste of her on his lips, and he was just a little overwhelmed at the feel and taste and just her. When she came, it was with a ragged moan of his name and he had to hold her hips down as her back bowed off of the bed. 

He brought her down gently, whispering, “You’re absolutely bloody perfect, dearest darling… Absolutely perfect, will you let me do it again? Please, let me make you feel good again…”

She gripped at his hair and pulled him up to her face, kissing him with so much passion that he was almost overwhelmed with the feeling and he loved her so much he was almost afraid of it. She placed sucking kisses around his mouth and chin and brought her mouth back to his, kissing him with all she had. He tasted her on her own tongue, and he groaned. She palmed his erection through his trousers, and he panted against her mouth as she squeezed at his cock through the fabric. He moaned her name, burying his face in her shoulder and working his hips against her hand. He needed her, he wanted her… given her actions and words earlier that day she would let him and she would be his and the only thing he wanted now, the only thing he thought he deserved was her pleasure. He trailed his hand down her body and toyed with her clit as she palmed him. She whispered his name again and he let his fingers dip into her again. This time, he worked her up slower, bringing her to the edge a few times before finally, finally letting her go. Somehow, she had worked his belt open while he’d had his fingers inside her and wrapped her hand around his cock and he was gasping just as much as her when she finally came down from her high. 

“I need you,” she whispered into his ear as she thrust into his hand. “Please let me have you, Lucifer… I need you, please…”

And she was begging him. Chloe Decker was begging him and that… that was something she must never do again, so he told her. “Chloe, my darling, my love, you need only to ask, and I’d give you my soul…” he whispered this as he looked into her eyes and placed loving kisses to her face and neck.

He pulled away from her and let his trousers and pants fall to his feet. When he came back to her, he settled himself over her and just kissed her for a long while, getting stuck there with her lips on his. He wanted to kiss her, to never stop kissing her, but then she took hold of him, and he gasped into her mouth. She teased his tip at her entrance, and this time, he was the one to beg. He whispered his wants into the skin of her neck and when she finally let him in, he groaned low and long and had to take a moment before he moved within her. She cradled his head in her hands, soothing him by tracing his features. And when he felt he could move without being overwhelmed, he leaned down and kissed her, moving so slowly within her that it seemed like she could hardly stand it. He made love to her, slowly and with everything he was. She treated him with the same gentle reverence and when they tipped over the edge, they tipped over it together. 

They basked in the aftermath, her clinging to him as he tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him. He kissed her like it was his only purpose in life, like it was why he was made, and in that moment, that’s exactly what it felt like. He rolled them so he wasn’t on top of her anymore, but he didn’t stop kissing her. It was the only way he could think to express his gratitude and love for her at the same time. Words would never be enough, but he would do his best to tell her as often as she could that he loved her, that she was everything he needed. 

She pulled away from him, holding his face in her hands and smiled at him (him, the Devil, like he was precious and loved and he was… Oh, he loved her with everything he ever was and would be). “I love you,” she told him, like it was simple, like it was fact.

He threaded his hands into her hair, stroked at her cheeks, and looked into her eyes and he was drowning. Before he submerged completely, before he was completely engulfed in her gaze, he told her, “I love you, too, darling…”

They fell asleep like that, wrapped in each other’s arms and happier than they had ever been. The only thing they needed in that moment was each other, and knew, that for the rest of their lives that that’s all they would ever really need. 

×××

Lucifer had never felt quite so at peace before. Or well, he had, but every time he was with his family (he had made a family and he knew for certain that’s what it was because he’d asked Amenadiel if he remembered the feeling of family from the Silver City and the answer had been similar to what he was feeling now, to what he’d been feeling for a while now), he felt it and it never failed to shock him. Right now, he was doing the dishes and Chloe and her mother sat on the couch. Beatrice was playing with some toys on the floor with Ella, and they were trying to entice one of Charlotte’s children to play. Charlotte was seated next to Daniel on the love seat, and they seemed to be in their own little world. Linda and Maze were talking to each other, both studiously ignoring Amenadiel as he tried to talk to the both of them. 

Daniel seemed to be more grounded now. He would focus on Trixie when he promised, he became a better father, realizing somehow that work wasn’t as important as his daughter. Lucifer was glad that Beatrice had someone else to depend on. She still called him when she had nightmares (which were rare these days), and she still called him ‘papa’, though that was still interchangeable with his name. He’d become somewhat of a family man, though he still had to attend some nights at Lux to keep the people happy. He spent most of his time with the Detective, whether it be at work or her apartment.

He was happy. He had his family, he had his Detective, and he had his friends. He never thought he would have all of this; never thought he would be worthy of this, but here he was with his little family. He almost couldn’t believe that he was happy, that this was something he was allowed to have. He was brought out of his thoughts by Chloe, who wrapped her arms around him from behind. He allowed himself a smile, but he finished the last few dishes in the sink before he turned in her arms and placed a loving kiss to her forehead. “How’s it going in there, darling?” he whispered against her hair.

She hummed and snuggled deeper into his chest. His smile widened as she did that and he knew she was tired, but this dinner party had been her idea. Although, not rescheduling had probably been a mistake, seeing as they’d caught a particularly nasty case at the beginning of the week and had only just wrapped it up around noon. She had insisted that the party still be today, so they had the party. Though, he had made sure that she’d taken a nap before getting ready. He knew she was ready to sleep for a while, he was too, the case had been though, but they’d done it. He’d wanted nothing more than to cuddle up with his Detective and Beatrice and not move for the rest of the night, but Chloe had decided that they couldn’t cancel the party. 

They stood in the kitchen together for the longest time until Beatrice came over and hugged them both around the waist. “Are you guys okay?” she asked. “I just heard Dad tell Grandma that you had a bad case…”

“Just tired, dear heart,” Lucifer told her with a gentle smile. Chloe yawned against his chest and he chuckled before yawning too, which made Beatrice yawn. He thought it was because of how contagious yawns were until she rubbed at her eye with her fist. He smiled again and pulled away from Chloe to gather the little girl in his arms. “Is it time for bed, my little love?” he asked into her hair. She nodded with another yawn, so Lucifer carried her into her bedroom and settled her beneath the covers. “Goodnight, darling,” he told her, placing a kiss to the side of her head. Chloe told the little girl goodnight as well. Telling her that the three of them were going to spend the day together tomorrow so she better rest. 

When they left the little girl’s room, she leaned against him as he settled in the corner of the couch. Ella called them adorable for the three thousandth time, and Daniel laughed, happy that they’d found each other and happy that he’d found someone too. 

Eventually, all their guests excused themselves and they were left alone. Chloe, who had been on the verge of sleep since the end of dinner, finally let herself fall into sleep. He smiled, glad that he could still carry her up to bed, because he’d always loved the feeling of her in his arms and it was something he’d never take for granted. He settled into bed and pulled her into his arms when she turned towards him. He’d never been more comfortable.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hold on to me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656079) by [swankkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swankkat/pseuds/swankkat)




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